The knowledge about the behavior of cables is substantial in cases of transients or in cases of faults. However, there are only a few models that are tailored to the current requirements for calculations of transient phenomena in three-phase cable systems. These models are based on complex structures. PI-section cable models with simple structures were previously qualified only for calculations in the frequency domain. A new full frequency-dependent cable model to simulate transient phenomena is introduced and validated. The model is based on lumped parameters with cascaded frequency-dependent PI-sections. For the implementation and the integration in simulation tools, it is important to investigate the impact of the PI-section parameters to the accuracy, the stability and the mathematical robustness. In this work, the impact of the frequency dependence of cable parameters, the length distribution and the number of PI-sections on the results of the developed three-phase cable model have been discussed. For simulations in the time domain, two algorithms have been presented to optimize the number of PI-sections based on a specified accuracy.