In an STP twisted pair cable, the foil screens within the cable can prevent signal coupling, as long as the installed and bonded STP cables are correct, alien crosstalk below required performance levels can be achieved.
However, the unshielded twisted pair cables do not have any measures to prevent alien crosstalk. When adjacent cables are close together, external crosstalk will increase. Termination STP cables have a shielding layer around each individual pair, therefore STP cables are not easy to terminate, making cable management more difficult.
Before termination, the foil and drain wire in the shielded twisted pair cable need to be pulled back and wound around the cable end, and the unused foil also should be trimmed. But there is no insulation such as extra foil wrapping in unshielded twisted pair cables.
As a result, for managers, termination becomes very easy, and the termination spends more time for STP cabling than the UTP link. The patch cables do not need this process, cause they are with connectors, the termination is only suiting for bulk cables.
When there is no strong electromagnetic environment, you can choose unshielded twisted pair cables, and the UTP patch cable price is friendly to a tight budget.
When you need to avoid being disturbed by electromagnetic interference, you must consider using more expensive STP cables, which can also be operated under outdoor conditions.
