Check your wire order. Normally it's black, green, white, red respectively for ground, D+, D-, power.
You should get best performance using proper USB cables (characteristic impedance 90Ω, which is a measure of AC signal propagation characteristics and has little to do with resistance between the ends). Ethernet might work. But your cable doesn't even look like D+/D- are twisted together, so it may only be effective over shorter distances than proper high speed data cables.
Try some low speed devices like keyboards or mice, they ought to be more tolerant of poor cabling and may tell you whether the problem is with signal quality or missing/swapped data lines, for example.
Measure the 5V at the end with the device connected, this will tell you if there is a problem with voltage drop along the way.
I recall that USB is not recommended for distances longer than a few meters, but I don't know how it fails exactly and how far could you push it with good cables.