The advertisement for the house probably says "Prewired for smart house" but when we built in 2019, cat6 prewiring was not something that was part of the building package, it was an add on like a pool or special landscaping. I met with the galaxy low voltage guy and he said yes to everything. Of course . . .

Now they pull cat6 wires during construction and sell it as "Prewired"

I got the BOSE sound system prewired above the living room, however, given the advancements in wireless speakers. . . . oooops, there are a pile of useless wires in the ceiling

Yes as the builder just puts the infrastructure in and when you pick your provider they will terminate the cable ends.

Hi, ok what is a Cat 6 wire? And you mention of a ceiling mount? Are those for WiFi home control?

CAT 6 consists of 4 twisted pairs of copper wire and 259 MHz of bandwidth, supporting data transfer of 10 Gbps 10GBASE-10 for distances up to approximately 180 feet. Quite easy to terminate.

Network wiring Cat5/6
 

The best use of any Cat5/6 wiring left over not needed is to add a surveillance system that works over IP. These are the best options for surveillance systems. You get a PoE switch and it powers all your cameras - no batteries to worry about. Always a nice option to have when vacationing away from your home to monitor what is going on. You can even add water sensors, thermostats to your home that can all be controlled and monitored remotely. Although these last two items mostly work on Wi-Fi they are very much a nice feature to any home and a sense of security. This is what I would look at doing with the extra Cat5/6 cabling. Pull them back and run them to the outside points monitoring your entrances and add a few cameras outside and even a few inside.

How would the Villages know which provider you will use, and where you want to place your equipment?

Just wanted to show you a view of Monument Way still under construction headed to Maxwell Villas which is already completed and occupied by homeowners. The Villages completed Maxwell Villas before these houses on Monument Way where completed. The road is a complete mess. Not right for homeowners to have to drive thru this disaster area every single day. But you know what they say "You can't fight city hall".

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Did Galaxy charge you for the work?

Spectrum finished mine when they came out to service.

That has to be frustrating - wonder why they completed and sold the homes at the end of Monument Way prior to completing construction on those homes at the entrance to the villas? I hope the construction ends soon - you bought in a great part of Richmond (I tried twice to secure a courtyard villa in your area but was not successful) - I close on a nice patio villa in the Oliver Villas (north part of Richmond) in two weeks - last I was there, I saw a lot of construction in my new area as well.

What exactly did Spectrum do? How long where they out there for?

Yes, it’s your responsibility to hire somebody to do this. I rewired my phone hole house myself instead of hiring it out and saved me almost $1000, I put my own network in too and get much better wifi and wired speeds than having somebody else do it

Prewired smart house means:

Cat 6 cable -> a type of ethernet cable specs to connect devices.
Prewired smart -> Cat6 wire are pulled through the walls between wall connections through out the house and the wiring closet, usually in the garage

Wiring closet -> an electrical box inserted into the wall of the garage where the cable line comes into the house.

What goes into the wiring cabinet ->
incoming cable feed wire from your cable supplier, is connected to a cable modem from the cable supplier.
the cable modem separates ethernet from cable video and has wired and wireless connections to connect to the ethernet wires.

The cable modem may or may not have wireless, high proportion of cable modems have wireless included. I do not have wireless in my cable modem, i have an independent wireless access point in the ceiling which is connected to a NAT router, which is then connected to the cable modem.

I require a NAT router because the cable modem does not have a router in it, just the ethernet cable splitter. just the way i designed the network so i have more control if i want it. . . and i worked for a network R&D company in the 1990's when the internet went public with lots of the internet pioneers.

Because Galaxy was an independent supplier and my request was for ethernet wiring with NO phone outlets, i expected Galaxy to wire for internet, not phone drops. My custom request was not the norm at the time, and so they the standard process was not changed, typical with std manufacturing, the custom details are often missed, and that wasn't the only item missed or done incorrectly.

We had Galaxy terminate the Cat 6 cables, convert a few phone jacks to RJ45 ethernet connections and had them add a few more in addition to pulling my rear channels for surround and mounting them in the ceiling. All total was about $1300. They did a great job but I had to argue with them about what I wanted. They just wanted me to do everything WiFi. If I have a portable device, WiFi is fine, that's what it's designed for. If I can get a cable to something I'm streaming with, I'll do it....