---

Message-ID: <20211014012002.GA14560@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2021 01:20:02 +0000 From: Bill Horne <malQassRimiMlation@gmail.com> Subject: Ever get the feeling there's a hidden agenda? I was talking to the head of a local charitable group, who was intrviewing my wife and I to see if we qualifiy for their help. When I mentioned I was a retired telephone guy, she told me that an elderly woman she knew, who still has a wired POTS line, is having a lot of trouble with her phone line ringting without her being able to answer it during wet weather, and she asked me if a flooded cable would do that. I told her that a flooded cable was much more likely to cause a continuous busy signal, and she shifted instantly to saying that's what they were getting: busy signals when someone tried to call this person. I offfered to give her a spare trimline phone, and she asked repeatedly if that would cure the problem. I told her that it might, and that there was no harm in trying. She changed the subject. Would anyone care to tell me what she was really asking? -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)

---

Message-ID: <20211014003719.lclewh@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2021 22:33:25 -0400 From: Thomas Horne W3TDH <hornetd.remove-this@gmail.com> Subject: Re: POTS replacement On 2021-10-11 20:12, comp.dcom.telecom@googlegroups.com wrote: > Bill Horne <malQRMassimilation@gmail.com>: Oct 11 06:09PM > > On Mon, Oct 11, 2021 at 06:01:04AM -0000, David Lesher wrote: > > >There are VoIP adapters which are able to connect POTS instruments to > > >a VoIP access. They're almost certain to cost less than a cellular > adapter. > > > No broadband there. Hence the cellular request. > > Every time I read about cellular devices repacing copper pairs, I > remember the job my brother had in South America: he was building > solar-powered cell sites for a subsidiary of GE. > > He told me that every site was located on a mountaintop, accessible > only by helicopter. Bill Your memory is a little off on that. Many of the sights were on mountaintops were the only rapid way to access them is helicopter. Many of those had very rough, hard traveling for days at a time, road access but about a 1/3 did not. We also had to install them at every telephone exchange in the southern part of the country because the system needed access to the individual local telephone exchanges to put the calls onto their POTS network. The existing connections between rural exchanges was microwave and they said that they only had trouble with that very rarely. I asked the Telefónica Argentina project manager why they were insisting on steel equipment shelters for installations on ridges and mountaintops, that were being built using helicopters which were real beasts [S-64 Aircrane class birds], when they were allowing us to use walk in refrigerator kits to make the shelters at the exchanges. He chuckled and said, through pantomime, that the bored gauchos on the pampas below were likely to shoot at the shelters with their 30/30 lever action saddle carbines. The steel skinned shelters would stop the 30/30 bullets where aluminum shelters or the metal skinned Styrofoam panels of the walk in refrigerator kits, which we had used so successfully in so many other places, would not. A side note on that project was that I carried an extra suitcase everywhere that the crew went and I filled 2 20-Liter size water carriers with fresh water at the start of each days driving between the work sites. The suitcase was one of the monstrous roll along hard shelled type that is almost always charged as overweight when flying. Finally the crews curiosity got the better of them and they asked what was in the suitcase after noticing that it's weight never changed and they had never seen me open it. I just opened it for them because my Spanish is so bad that the only phrase I knew was "Where is the bathroom." They gawked at my large supply of freeze dried food, international multi fuel stove, pots, & eating equipment for 8 people. They asked me what it was for and I pantomimed driving the truck, the engine sputtering, and our coming to an unwanted stop. I looked all around and shrugged my shoulders, talked on the satellite phone without actually using it, indicated 2 days to them and began the set up to cook. They asked "So Much?" I gestured 16 days for me or 2 days for all of us. I then repeated 2 days for all of us and showed yes by the customary shake of the head recognized everywhere I've been in the world. After that they went obviously out of their way to do anything which I indicated needed to be done. I had obviously risen very much higher in their esteem. I put a large duct tape stripe across the suitcase and wrote out word by word, from my English <> Spanish dictionary, My life long crew leading mantra. "Take care of the people and they will take care of the work!" After that they showed that suitcase to every one of the managers and overhead types who came to the work sights like a show and tell. Many of them saw how appreciative their construction people were of my looking out for them and got the idea. I cannot believe that so many people in management are total strangers to that concept. It sometimes took days to drive from one town to the next and we stayed at rural guest houses at ranches along the way. When Telefónica Argentina realized how much Westinghouse (not GE) was charging them for my time they had another crew that would leap frog to every other install and had me driven to an airport to fly to the next install. I left the suitcase with the crew I started with and told them to just leave it at the Buenos Aires office when they got back. A week later the other crew had a much older but fully functional satellite phone, a couple of crates of food, bottled water and a little gas stove on which to cook. That crew looked at their boss like a Martian had landed. He pointed at me and indicated that I was crazy and they only did it to humor me. When he was gone each one of them shook my hand like I was a long lost son. It really isn't rocket science. I taped the same mantra onto those containers as well. "Take care of the people and they will take care of the work!" We got a lot more shelters built and fitted out in one month than anyone at Westinghouse thought we could. Gee I wonder why? -- Tom