I think he is wondering if there is another option besides flat cable. Your right, they do fail a lot. I went through 5 of them last year on our patio door setup at the apartment before we moved into our house. If you are using them on something that you open and close all the time, they are going to crap out on you. I figured something out though, if you unscrew the frame of the patio door and run the flat cables under that, basically in between the door frame and the building frame, you don't run into them failing as they are not opened and closed upon constantly. Your other option is to just drill holes to get the lines in.