December 07, 2009
Real World Telephone Terminal
Sometimes I get to go out into the real world and see what the low life has to deal with. This time it was a 1MB POTS line (Plain Old Telephone Service, AKA "Dial Tone") going to a Shell Oil facility in Wilmington, being paid for by a group in Bell South, FLorida. Since we pay for it, I get to install it.
Find the B-Box, find my dial tone on the underground, there's a jumper. Check the aerial, it's there also. Computer records win again -- it's reusing the same facilities that previously fed the same location. Close up the B-Box, no work needed there. Dial tone will be on binding post 10 at the 1.1.
Get access to the site, they show me the telephone closet. Dial tone is not on pair 10. This is not the 1.1. There is writing on the wall near the block -- the 1.1 is on the wall 20 feet from the guard shack.
Except....
It's a new guard shack, at a different location than the one referenced. It's on a wall about 60 feet from the guard shack. I pace the distance from the closet and mark the backboard by the block -- "corner of wall 125 feet east of here." Next guy should be able to find it easier.
There's feed cable to an aerial termina (that it is on a wall five feet off the ground does not mean it is not the equivalent of hanging on a pole.) Next to it is a cabinet, with cable and blocks feeding the office building.
Find my pair, there's a jumper on it, goes into a conduit, conduit goes 20 feet and stops, cut, nothing there. HEY!! That's where the old guard shack was, this was the phone line for the guard way back when. Pull the IW out of the pipe, feed it into the box, shorten and punch down on a vacant pair.
Close up everything, go back to the closet in the office building, verify my dialtone made it there and tag it.
Yeah.... As typical with OCS circuits, the contact in Florida is a clerk who knows nothing, no one told anyone on site what's happening, no one knows exactly what this phone line is for. But when they do figure out what it is for, it's in and working.