Re: Phone Line Interfacing - FCC Part-68

On May 26, 1:23 pm, "Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terr...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
rickman wrote:

To the best of my knowledge, they are removing very little, if any, of
the old phone lines.

In some areas they are pulling out the copper and replacing it with
fiber, to keep from having to tear up roads and sidewalks. The cast
concrete conduits are almost full of copper, so they pull one cell full
of fiber and transfer a large block of the traffic to it, then pull out
the old wire and repeat, till everything has been updated. A couple
years ago I visited the Sprint warehouse in Eustis and saw maybe 50
tractor trailer loads of scrap lead and plastic cable they had pulled
from service. They had a company that would come in and use a machine
to remove the outer jacket, and wind the scrap copper wire on big spools
to take it to a refinery. That had over 1000 spools of different fiber
and copper cable in stock, but told me they couldn't wait to get rid of
as much copper as possible. They had purchased Florida telephone a few
years before, and it was like a 1940's telco museum with all the old
junk they kept in service.

It may be that copper is being replaced in some situations. But I
expect that was trunk lines of some sort and not the wiring direct to
homes. Also, you are describing installations that are already
underground. Like I said, there are few poles being taken down to
install fiber.


The fiber is mostly in new neighborhoods. My
house is served by sort of copper to a CO that was put in some 50 or
60 years ago. Somewhere in the last 30 years they were running out of
copper pairs out this way and they installed a "pair gain amp" which
is a type of multiplexor. As a result, I can't get DSL or even 56K
modem connections. I am lucky to get 28 kbps connections... and yes,
the lines are on poles for most of the mile to the CO. 20 years ago
someone (this city I believe) came up with the bucks to bury all the
phone and electric lines in the main part of town. Otherwise, if the
wires were on poles 50 years ago, they are *still* on poles here.

Poles don't last that long in Florida. Between high winds, lightning,
drunk drivers, and woodpeckers a lot of poles last 20 years, or less.

Is this a fact? I understand that 87.4% of all statistics are made
up. I know for a fact that woodpeckers don't attack phone poles.
Woodpeckers bore holes to get insects. There are no insects in poles
unless they are already rotten and need to be taken down.

I don't know why you think they don't still maintain the poles and
lines overhead. It costs real money to bury that stuff and I may be
wrong, but I think they have to get right of way to bury the lines.
They did here, but that was downtown where they had to tear up the
sidewalk to bury them.

The same 'right of way' is needed for overhead lines which is granted
by local, county and state governments. The same goes for electric and
CATV lines. The electric and CATV are still overhead on my street, but
they replaced the aerial cables over 10 years ago. The subdivision was
built in 1964 so it was simpler to trench in the underground cable to
new pedestals, and change one drop at a time than to replace an old lead
and paper covered cable in place. A lot less labor, and it left all the
future work at ground level, which reduces the service time and risk of
someone falling off climbing hooks or a ladder.

In urban areas, it is *not* the same right of way. A phone company
may have right of way for the poles, but that does not give them the
right to dig up and bury lines. But the real issue is money. It is
very expensive to take out equipment and bury it.

I agree with that. The protectors will not protect against direct
lightning strikes. That can put thousands of volts on the wire and
hundreds of amps and actually melt the wire. Even a nearby strike can
induce enough current and voltage in a loop to arc through
insulation. I have seen this with my own eyes. No sign of a direct
strike, but split insulation and melted wire at each point that was
near a ground.

But new installation is not the same as replacing prior
installations. Maybe in Florida they have incentive to bury the lines
because of frequent storm damage. Here the phone company won't even
consider burying lines with their own dime.

Undergund cable is fast and easy in Florida's soil. Then the chances
of damage from high winds or lightning goes way down. The land lines
gave better service after the last couple hurricanes than cell phone
service. Their generators had 48 to 72 hours of fuel, and some areas
were without power for two weeks.

It's not an issue of soil. In an urban area they have to dig up
streets and sidewalk. That is not cheap. It may work better, but
they don't rip out stuff that works. But I don't live in FL. Maybe it
really is worth doing on their own. If so, great. But the rest of
the country still has *lots* of phone lines.

Major upgrades were needed, so it was cheaper to build new plant that
keep patching the old. Some areas had been out of spare pairs for
years. They had to bring lines from other nearby areas to back fill.
Then there was the housing boom, lots of new businesses and for a while,
a lot of people wanted two or more land lines. Also, some areas didn't
have any poles because they were too close to a pond or lake to set a
pole. A shallow plastic conduit would keep the cable dry without
spending tens of thousands of dollars to drive concrete pillars into the
soft soil to hold a metal or concrete pole. There are areas of downtown
Ocala i saw with spare plastic conduit for additional fiber. The city's
electric department installed fiber broadband all though the business
district as an incentive to bering businesses to town. I see it once in
a while when i have to visit Ocala.

I am in an area where there are few if any spare lines. That is why I
only get 28kbps on my modem. I am not on a copper pair. I share
copper pairs with a bunch of others through an antique multiplexor. I
only wish they would replace that piece of crap so I could get high
speed.


I only wish they would replace the CO with smaller, more local
equipment that would support some sort of high speed. You are one of
the lucky ones.

Actually, I went with Earthlink via the Road Runner fiber optic
backbone before DSL was available in my area. Now that it is fiber to
less than a mile from the house the line is clean. I get long distance
calls from the NE and northern California and it sounds like it's next
door. 20 years ago you had to yell a lot, because of noise on the old
aerial cables. They took so long to upgrade to fiber that I only know a
couple people with DSL in the subdivision. I have repaired computers for
over 25 yeas, so I end up talking to a lot of neighbors with problems.
:(

At least you have it. DSL is only something I hear about... a lot!

Rick
.