Cat6 Cable Price in Kenya: Indoor, Outdoor and Cat6A Compared

If you are wiring an office, running cables to IP cameras or linking a gatehouse to the main house, the cable is the part you only want to buy once. It goes into walls, trunking and trenches, and pulling it out later costs far more than the cable itself. Below is the full list of Cat6 and Cat6A cable we sell with the exact price, followed by what actually separates a KSh 12,500 box from a KSh 35,000 one.

Cat6 and Cat6A cable prices at Giga Team

Network cable is normally sold by the box or drum, and the standard length is 305 metres (1,000 feet). Where a listing below states 305 m, that is the length. Where it does not, ask us to confirm the length before you order, so you are comparing like with like.

"Ask us" means the listing does not state that detail, so we would rather confirm it with you on WhatsApp than guess. On a 305 m box, KSh 12,500 works out to about KSh 41 per metre and KSh 26,000 to about KSh 85 per metre. If you are paying an installer to pull the cable as well, typical market ranges seen in 2026 for cabling labour and materials are around KSh 80 to 150 per metre (installer sites); that is a market figure, not our price.

Cat6 vs Cat6A: which do you need?

Both carry gigabit Ethernet over the full 100 m, which is what almost every office PC, IP camera, access point and VoIP phone in Kenya uses today. The difference shows at 10 gigabit:

• Cat6 is rated to 250 MHz and supports 10 Gbps only over shorter runs, about 55 m in good conditions. It is thinner, easier to bend and cheaper.
• Cat6A is rated to 500 MHz and supports 10 Gbps over the full 100 m. It is noticeably thicker and stiffer, so it needs bigger trunking and conduit and wider bend radii, and it takes longer to terminate.

For a home, a shop or a CCTV system, Cat6 is enough. Choose Cat6A for a server room, the backbone between floors or switches, links you may later upgrade to 10 Gbps, or any building you expect to keep cabled for ten years or more. Shielded cable such as the Siemon F/UTP is for runs near heavy electrical noise, like motors or lift rooms, and it only helps if the whole run, including the jacks and patch panel, is shielded and earthed.

Pure copper vs CCA: how to spot cheap cable

CCA means copper-clad aluminium: an aluminium core with a thin copper coating. It looks like copper on the cut end and costs much less to make, which is why it turns up in boxes sold well below the going price. It is not compliant with the Cat6 standards, which call for solid copper conductors, and it causes real problems:

• Higher resistance, so PoE cameras and access points at the far end of a long run may reboot or fail to power up.
• More heat in bundles carrying PoE.
• Aluminium is brittle, so conductors crack at the punch-down or under repeated bending, giving intermittent faults that are hard to trace.
• It corrodes where it meets the copper contacts in jacks, especially in humid coastal air.

Simple checks before you buy or install:

1. Scrape test. Strip a short piece and scrape a conductor with a blade. Pure copper stays copper-coloured all the way through. CCA shows silver-white metal underneath.
2. Flex test. Bend a stripped conductor back and forth. Copper takes many bends; CCA snaps quickly.
3. Weight. A box of pure copper Cat6 is noticeably heavier than a CCA box of the same length. If a "Cat6" box feels light, scrape test it.
4. Price. A 305 m box priced far below the rest of the market is the biggest warning sign.
5. Printing. Read the jacket. Genuine cable prints the category, conductor gauge and standard. "CCA" is sometimes printed in small letters.

Our post on genuine versus counterfeit security equipment covers the same problem across CCTV and networking gear.

Outdoor cable: when you need an LDPE jacket

Standard indoor cable has a PVC jacket. Out in the sun it goes brittle and cracks, and once water gets in, the cable fails. You need an outdoor-rated jacket, usually black LDPE (low-density polyethylene), for any cable that:

• runs along an outside wall or the perimeter wall to a camera or gate;
• crosses between buildings on a catenary wire;
• goes underground in conduit to a gatehouse, store or second block.

Even outdoor cable should go underground in conduit, not bare in the soil, unless it is specifically rated for direct burial. Seal the ends and put outdoor joints inside weatherproof junction boxes. For a camera on the perimeter wall, the Giganet Cat6A outdoor LDPE drum (KSh 26,000) or the Dahua UTP outdoor cable (KSh 15,000) from the table above are the ones to look at. If a building is more than 100 m away, cable is no longer the answer; see our guide to a point to point wireless link, or consider fibre such as our 1 km fibre drop cable (KSh 14,500).

The 100 metre rule and PoE distance

Ethernet over twisted-pair copper has a 100 m channel limit. That is the whole path from the switch to the device: up to 90 m of fixed cable in the wall, plus up to 10 m of patch cords at the two ends. It applies to Cat5e, Cat6 and Cat6A alike; a higher category does not buy you more distance.

PoE follows the same 100 m limit because the power travels on the same Ethernet link. In practice, long PoE runs on poor cable are where problems show first: a camera works on the bench and then keeps rebooting at the end of an 85 m run of CCA. Good copper cable and a decent PoE switch avoid most of this. Two switches we stock:

• D-Link DGS-1100-08P 8-port gigabit PoE smart switch, KSh 14,000, for small offices and up to eight cameras or access points.
• D-Link 24-port PoE switch, KSh 35,000, for larger offices and CCTV systems.

Our guide to network switches and PoE covers power budgets, and office WiFi and structured cabling covers the layout of a whole office.

Patch cords, cabinets and finishing the job

Solid cable from the box goes into the wall, the punch-down patch panel and the wall jack. Between the patch panel and the switch, and between the wall jack and the PC, use stranded patch cords, which survive being plugged and moved. Our 3 m Giganet patch cords are KSh 300 each. Do not make patch cords from solid cable with crimped plugs and leave them flexing on a desk; they are a common source of intermittent faults.

For anything beyond a handful of points, put the patch panel, switch and router in a cabinet so the cabling stays neat and labelled. The 42U cabinet (KSh 75,000) suits a server room. Label both ends of every cable at installation; the next technician will thank you.

If you send us your floor plan, the number of points and how far the furthest one is from the switch, we can suggest which cable and how many boxes on WhatsApp at +254 718 811 661. We install in Nairobi and deliver anywhere in Kenya for a flat KSh 300 with cash on delivery. Browse everything in networking and WiFi.