Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) Unshielded twisted pair (UTP) is a ubiquitous type of copper cabling used in telephone wiring and local area networks (LANs). There are five types of UTP cables -- identified with the prefix CAT, as in category -- each supporting a different amount of bandwidth. Alternatives to UTP cable include coaxial cable and fiber optic cable. There are benefits and tradeoffs to each type of cabling, but broadly speaking, most enterprises favor UTP cable due to its low ...