When I was still on the tools i did a lot of structured wiring and I was always ticked at the govments need to constantly upgrade the network cabling to the latest and greatest. No sooner did we install cat 5 then turn around and install 5e. Yet the network was still using 10 base t nic cards and simple hubs instead of routers. I would submit my cable test reports often right after some network geek would complain that we installed a defective network or some other reason that the network was running at some level well below 100 mhz. Most of the staff were running simple word processor or small spreadsheets and the network worked fine. There are some ministry offices like forestry where file transfer speed really do need to run the fastest available technology but often the geeks would still install some roadblock or non compatible component. These guys are using cat 3 patch cords too. I had one guy complain to his IT manager that the cable I just installed was no better than the one we replaced. I made him a patch cord from the router to the patch panel and the network speed went up to his expectations. I told him to buy some cat 5e patch cords as well as throw away some of the ones with broken tabs etc. Point is the speed on a network is determined by the weakest link and it is still often plenty fast enough.
