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From: RANCK@VTVM1.BITNET ("Wm. L. Ranck")
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: The phone company
Message-ID: <8710191436.AA10720@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Mon, 19-Oct-87 09:29:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8710191436.AA10720
Posted: Mon Oct 19 09:29:14 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Oct-87 06:49:08 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 30


   Ah yes . . . dealing with the phone company.  Several years ago I
was installing and maintaining limited distance data sets on leased
4-wire circuits that our local phone company provided.  As leased circuits
they didn't have regular phone numbers associated with them just
circuit numbers.  At fairly regular intervals one of these would become
noisy and I would simply hook an oscilloscope to the pairs and verfy
that there was really something wrong with the telco wire and then call
the repair service.
   That is when the fun started.  First the people who took the repair
calls didn't want to believe that the line didn't have a phone number.
Eventually I'd convince them to take the circuit number instead, but
I had to re-convince them each time.  I would tell them the circuit
was noisy and then hang up.  Almost exactly 20 minutes later I would
get a phone call from a technician asking what I meant by a noisy
circuit.  I learned rather quickly that I shouldn't mention that I
had used an oscilloscope on the line, because that really upset them
for some reason that I could never figure out.  Anyway, I then had to
convince the technician that I wasn't crazy and that there really was
a problem with that circuit.  Usually I'd get the 'it looks OK to me'
response, but with a little persistence they would check something
that the telco people refer to as 'carbons'.  Those are apparently
lightning protection devices (maybe MOVs ?) that will get leaky and
cause some ground loop noise problems.
   The frequency of problems went up during thunderstorm season.
So leaky lightning protection devices are also a possible problem.
   It's nice to know that the local phone companies haven't really
changed much since the breakup.

Bill Ranck