Flash

Poles don't fall on the ground very often. The problem is when trees fall on the lines and tear them in two. I've also seen lines broken in two by ice storms which is what happened here a couple of years ago.

--

Rick

I worked for the railroad as a signalman apprentice. The telephone and signal wires were on low poles with insulated wires. Running through very long stretches of low population they would be cut down and sold for the copper. Seems they would burn the insulation off first. They were usually not too bright and would get caught when trying to sell it. I remember one pair traveled to another state to sell the wire, but got caught anyway.

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Rick

When I heard of 999 in the UK, I wondered about our 911. I didn't think pulse dialing was still widely used by the time 911 came in, but looking it up I see this was the late 60's and pulse dialing was still in widespread use. I know that three digit numbers with a 0 or 1 in the middle were used as area codes and all equipment recognized them as special. AT&T was already using 411 and 611 for information and support, so I guess 911 seemed the easiest to implement and least likely to cause problems with mis-dials... except they didn't factor in the use of 9 to get an outside line through a PBX and the use of 1 to obtain long distance. We had a fax machine that somehow would dial up the emergency center from time to time by mistake. It got the wrong kind of attention and was disconnected.

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Rick

All four hurricanes that year the phone stayed up but no idea about HS cable as I hadn't it back then.

They do after they hit the vodka...

A week ago we had a municipal-wide planned blackout of 4 hours, announced well in advance, throughly communicated. (they had to do some essential service on the 50kV network binding the municipality together.)

It was long enough to see some mobile towers drop out, but my all-fiber internet connection never had a hitch. I have everything on a UPS on this side, and the WDM network boxes locally are fully passive, and the CO is properly backed up.

One win for fiber.

-- mrr

The word you are after is 'fibre'.

'Fiber' is someone who tells lies. :-)

---druck

On Thu, 29 Oct 2015 01:02:45 +0000 (UTC), Martin Gregorie declaimed the following:

In my experience, the only time you see "small diameter telephone wires" is in the run from a distribution box to the house. Otherwise the phone cable is often the largest diameter run on the pole -- since it may contain 100+ shielded twisted wire pairs to provide a small neighborhood (assume spares to allow two lines per customer, and that cable supports a subdivision of 50 houses, or a large apartment complex; cables up to 200 pairs are available

[they used the same photo for 100 pair, 150 pair, and 200 pair]).

--
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN 
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/

On Thu, 29 Oct 2015 10:21:40 +0000, The Natural Philosopher declaimed the following:

Last time I saw a phone cable "fail" it was because somebody dumped hot charcoal into the apartment dumpster... Which then ignited and burned through the phone cable running above it.

Took a few days to get my phone service straightened out -- they probably matched the twisted pairs by color code, but with 4+bundles per cable with identical codes there is only a 25% chance that the correct pair was linked (we can ignore the first end of the patch, but the other end then has four choices for each pair)... The cable was replaced on the first day, and then more days were spent putting a signal injector on each pair at the building entry panel and going back up the street to the main distribution box to see where the signal came out, and swapping with the correct pair.

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	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN 
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/

I work with some software developers who are from and live in Poland. I wonder whether they'll agree with that assertion. :-)

--
Robert Riches 
spamtrap42@jacob21819.net 
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)

Either someone didn't know what they were doing, or standards have been abandoned!

Phone cable is built in layers. I can't remember the colours now, but each layer has a start pair, running pairs and an end pair - that way you know which direction to go. Each layer is separated from the next by thin plastic tape. That standard goes right back to the days when underground cable had bare strands wrapped in coloured paper tape, the layers separated by a spiral of cotton and the whole lot lead sheathed.

The engineers should be able to join hundreds of pairs without a single mistake.

--
W J G

And I spent 6 weeks working in Poland, in the 70's while communism wasstill in place. I speak from experience ;)

Working with them is /not/ the same as drinking with them! Brings back some great memories - not sure I could do it now though

fruit

Nope that's a fibber :)

-- Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays C:>WIN | A better way to focus the sun The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see You lose and Bill collects. |

il Fri, 30 Oct 2015 09:39:01 +0000, fruit ha scritto che...

Best thing is to work with them *and* drink with them.

not at the same time though.

:-)

--
 UoScAr, Imola, 40, (150)+146, 16

I was talking 'old' - individual wires strung between insulators, not multi-wire insulated cables. Where and when I grew up (NZ countryside poles and wires were the norm and fairly common in towns as well. The main difference was that in the country, most phones[*] were on party lines while towns had individual phone lines and exchanges.

Had to arrive in the UK to discover multi-wire telephone cables.

[*] and the phones had a crank handle rather than a dial - you listened first, said 'working?' in case you'd picked up during a pause, and cranked Morse - half turn for a dot, two or three turns for a dash - to indicate whether you wanted to talk to the exchange or a neighbour.

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martin@   | Martin Gregorie 
gregorie. | Essex, UK 
org       |

Just maintaining the ballmer peak

In comp.sys.raspberry-pi message , Thu, 29 Oct 2015 23:42:12, druck posted:

and cannot spell "fibber".

--

 Merlyn Web Site <                       > - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.

Are you sure you're not fibbing about that? :-)

--
Robert Riches 
spamtrap42@jacob21819.net 
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)