While overall growth remains steady, the real story is about market direction, technology evolution, and the role that trusted brands play in supporting long-term investment decisions.

Excel’s Leadership Position in the UK Market

One of the standout findings in the report is Excel’s continued strength within the UK structured cabling market.

Excel sits firmly at the top in many of the categories, above a small number of global cabling brands and is identified as the strongest force in general enterprise deployments, operating alongside those brands.

In terms of market share, Excel represents:

• 22% of the total UK structured cabling market in 2025 – copper and fibre – number 1 position.
• 29% share of the copper product sales market by vendor in 2025 – number 1 position
• 37% share of copper cable sold in 2025 – number 1 position
• 23% of the total Category 6A sales by vendor – number 1 position
• 17% share of copper component sales – number 1 position

For customers, this translates into confidence that the solutions being deployed are proven, widely supported, and designed to meet real-world requirements across enterprise and campus environments.

A Market Shifting Towards Fibre-Rich Infrastructure

The report highlights a decisive transition underway: the UK cabling market is moving towards higher-performance, fibre-led architectures.

• Fibre is now approaching 40% of total market value
• Copper still represents around 60%, driven by LAN and PoE applications

This reinforces an important message:

The future isn’t about replacing copper entirely – it’s about building hybrid infrastructures that balance performance, scalability and cost.

Excel’s breadth across both copper and fibre positions it strongly to support this transition.

The Future of Copper

The report also reinforces a clear evolution within copper cabling itself.

Category 5e continues its steady decline and is expected to become largely negligible over the next couple of years, as modern networks demand greater bandwidth and improved PoE performance.

In contrast, Category 6A has firmly established itself as the default specification for new builds and major refurbishments, offering the performance headroom required for today’s high-density, device-driven environments. Alongside this, the UK’s regulatory landscape is pushing adoption of higher fire-performance standards, with B2ca now widely specified across Cat 6A deployments. Together, these trends highlight a decisive shift away from legacy cabling toward higher-performing, safer and more future-ready infrastructure.

Data Centres Driving the Next Phase of Growth

The most significant growth opportunity continues to come from the data centre sector.

• Data centre cabling grew by around 10% in 2025, far outpacing LAN growth
• Forecast growth remains strong at 7–9% annually through to 2030

The UK is now one of Europe’s most important data centre hubs, driven by:

• AI and high-performance computing
• Cloud and hyperscale expansion
• Increasing demand for digital infrastructure

This growth is reshaping cabling requirements, with customers increasingly specifying:

• High-density fibre architectures
• Scalable backbone designs
• Faster deployment models

MPO and Pre-Terminated Solutions Enter the Mainstream

A key technology trend is the rapid uptake of pre-terminated fibre, particularly MPO-based solutions.

The report highlights strong growth in this category, with some suppliers seeing year-on-year increases exceeding 25%.

What’s particularly interesting is how these solutions are now being deployed:

• Beyond hyperscale data centres
• Across campuses and multi-building estates
• Within enterprise upgrade programmes

For customers, the benefits are clear:

• Faster installation
• Greater consistency and quality
• Simplified scaling for future expansion

Last year we introduced the Elevate – Future Faster brand, providing a full range of products specifically designed and built for the data centre market.   Within this we have partnered with Senko, one of the industry’s most trusted manufacturers of fibre optic connectivity and we invested in a purpose-built fibre termination facility with highly skilled staff to deliver high density terminations including MPO, MTP and VSFF.

Technology Trends Shaping Customer Infrastructure

Alongside core market changes, several broader technology drivers are influencing cabling strategies:

AI and High-Density Networks

AI-driven workloads are increasing performance demands across the board, pushing infrastructure towards higher capacity and greater fibre density.

Wi-Fi 6E, Wi-Fi 7 and Beyond

The evolution of wireless is placing greater demands on wired networks, reinforcing the need for:

• Cat 6A as the default standard
• High-performance backbone connectivity

PoE and Smart Buildings

PoE adoption continues to rise, driven by the growth of:

• IP devices and sensors
• Intelligent building systems
• Energy-efficient, net-zero designs

These devices are increasingly being deployed over twisted pair cables running beyond the traditional 100 maximum channel length through the introduction of various new cable designs typically with larger conductor size, Excel intends to release solutions to meet these requirements during Q3 2026.

Passive Optical LAN (POL)

POL is gaining momentum as organisations look toward more scalable, energy-efficient network architectures.

Where the Opportunities Are Emerging

While some areas of the market remain subdued, particularly in office construction, several verticals stand out as strong growth drivers:

• Data centres and digital infrastructure
• Education and healthcare
• Defence and public-sector investment
• Industrial and logistics developments

These sectors are supporting continued demand while driving higher-value, more complex infrastructure projects.

What This Means for Our Customers

The message from the BSRIA report is clear: the UK structured cabling market is not just growing – it is transforming.

For customers, success will depend on:

• Selecting trusted, market-leading solutions
• Designing networks for both today and tomorrow
• Balancing copper and fibre strategically
• Aligning infrastructure with emerging technologies

With a 22% overall market share and market-leading positions across key segments, Excel is well placed to support customers through this transition and with the introduction of Elevate we are working to replicate this success within the data centre market.

At Mayflex and Excel Networking Solutions, our focus remains simple – helping our customers navigate change with confidence, delivering the products, expertise and support needed to build networks that are ready for whatever comes next.

By Andrew Percival, Managing Director