29 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
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The Telecom Digest for August 12, 2011
Volume 30 : Issue 202 : "text" Format
====== 29 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== |
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Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2011 10:48:27 -0700
From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Google residential Gb fiber installation v1
Message-ID: <siegman-76B334.10482710082011@sciid-srv02.med.tufts.edu>
In article <pan.2011.08.10.00.36.06.678454@example.invalid>,
"John F. Morse" <john@example.invalid> wrote:
> But I've never seen underground fiber inside a manhole.
>
> How is the maintenance slack loop ran? Around the manhole wall a couple
> of times, or is there some kind of rack used to hold the extra length?
Not exactly what you where asking, in a separate thread, but the
following may be of interest . . .
As of a week ago, our Google 1 Gb fiber connection has been installed
as far as a "flower pot" connection point at the back of our lot, just
outside our back fence.
On this particular segment of their larger installation, they used a
fancy guided underground boring setup to drill a subsurface hole
extending for a half mile or so along an open area behind a dozen
houses (no trenching).
At the same time a couple of guys with shovels dug a 3 or 4 foot deep
pit down to the bored hole behind each house, and then installed
conduit from pit to pit. (I actually didn't see whether they inserted
the plastic conduit for the entire run as one pull, then dug down and
cut the conduit, or whether they dug the pits first and pulled conduit
a hundred feet or so from pit to pit. In any case, the conduit had a
couple of foot gap in each pit.)
They then bored a T connection with a side conduit running from each
pit a couple of meters over to a buried plastic "flower pot" (that's
what they called it) with top at surface level, one for each house,
just outside our back property lines. (My pit was actually located at
the back corner of my lot and a neighbor's lot and so served two pits,
one for each of us.)
They then pulled fiber all along through the main conduit and split
off a single fiber for each house. Unfortunately I didn't get out to
see how they split off our fibers, or how they joined the conduits or
boxed up the T junction down in the pit; but the pit is now filled up,
with no access down to the T junction except by hand-digging down to
it. They may not have had to do any splicing at the T junction, just
peel off two fibers, since my understanding is that each house has a
home run back to the head end (??).
OK, now we've got two buried flower pots, maybe 12" diameter and 12"
tall, much like the boxes for subsurface water valves, with a single
fiber with 4' or 5' of extra length, and single plastic covered
12-gauge (?) copper wire (a ground wire?), coming into each one (mmy
fiber is green, my neighbor's is blue).
Also, we have an installer guy who has a black plastic "alligator box"
(that's what he called it) which looks like a super heavy-duty
oversized shipping box for a CD, about an inch thick, maybe 6"
diameter, opens on a hinge at one side; plus a black fiber pigtail a
meter long with a twist-lock-type fiber connector factory installed on
one end (I assume it was factory installed
He slides a couple inch long segment of heat-shrink tubing onto the
pigtail; uses what looks for all the world like a plain old wire
stripper to strip the insulation off an inch or so at the ends of the
pigtail and of the fiber pulled up out of the flower pot; sticks the
ends into slots on top of his grungy-looking small shoebox sized
splicer unit and flips two covers down (the splicer box is powered by
a cable running to his pickup truck); punches some buttons; and,
voila, the pigtail is spliced to the fiber, faster than I could have
soldered wires together.
Then he slides the heat-shrink section over the splice; puts it back
in another slot on the splicer; and cooks it down.
Then he coils the spliced section and 6" or 8" of fiber on each side
of it into a circular groove around inside the open alligator box;
secures the fiber with several what look like standard plastic cable
ties; closes the box; and dumps the fiber slack, the box, and the
pigtail down into the flower pot.
Tunneling, trenching, or boring the 80' or so from the flower box
across our back garden to our utility closet comes later. Whether
that will be conduit or micro-trenching or what, we don't know. If
anyone is interested, I can keep you informed.
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2011 18:45:28 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lisa or Jeff <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Verizon strike
Message-ID: <50823a5c-2956-4f52-98eb-f3e34f0afe61@a12g2000vbf.googlegroups.com>
I'm surprised no one has mentioned this. It shows how much the world
has changed. Today, Vz's unionized employees represent only a small
part of its workforce, and everything today is highly automated.
In my own humble opinion, as a Vz customer, I think Vz has cut back
service quality too much in its landline operations and that is a
factor in their loss of landline subscribers. Some installation has
been outsourced to independent people. Business, repair, and traffic
(operator) offices have been consolidated and it's difficult to get a
hold of a human. When I have gotten a landline employee (that is, a
traditional "Bell Telephone" person), the quality of service is far
higher than what I get from Vz's more modern units, such as wireless
or their sales departments.
article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/technology/sagging-verizon-landline-division-is-at-the-heart-of-strike.html?_r=1&hp
History note:
In 1947 there was a phone strike and it was disruptive. The post
office and Western Union both had to add people to handle extra
volume. In NYC, while 90% of the phones were dial, 10% were still
manual*--that meant an operator was required to complete every
call. Likewise, all toll calls required an operator, even city-
suburban calls. Subscribers in manual areas were asked to make
emergency calls only. (In the early 1950s dial was added to quite a
few places and calls could be dialed between city and suburb.)
* All of Staten Island, outer edges of Queens and the Bronx. Also
almost all of suburban Long Island. The city's manual exchanges could
be dialed from dial phones with the Panel Switch PCI interface to
manual "B" boards, except of course during the strike. Suburban towns
had old style manual numbers, ie "Babylon 354".
I shudder to think of the massive clerical cost for such 10-15c short
haul toll calls. An operator had to write up a toll ticket and time
the call. Then a clerk had to calculate the charge, then post it to
the customer's phone bill. Sitting there going through a pile of toll
tickets calculating charges by hand all day long, under the watchful
high of a strict supervisor, isn't my idea of a fun job.
I wonder when they first got a real electronic computer and what kind
it was.
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