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A Wiring Situation

D107
D107 Member Posts: 1,849
This was the scene in a shopping lane in Old Delhi this past winter. I assume each wire is assigned to a building; not sure if this motivates aspiring electricians. Luckily most Indians use cell phones--wouldn't want to be adding land lines to this debacle.
Zman

Comments

  • Steamhead
    Steamhead Member Posts: 16,796
    Looks like a mix of power and landline phone wires. Must be a lot of crosstalk on the latter.
    All Steamed Up, Inc.
    Towson, MD, USA
    Steam, Vapor & Hot-Water Heating Specialists
    Oil & Gas Burner Service
    Consulting
    D107
  • JUGHNE
    JUGHNE Member Posts: 11,042
    Old Delhi had safety nets under power lines to lower the body count if any primary lines fall...…..this was in the mid 70's. Then the only phone available for overseas calls was to go to the IT& T office and request an international call to perhaps West Germany. You filled out a form and waited for your call connection and then go into a phone box for your talk.

    Today Thailand has the similar wiring dilemma , bundles of cables hanging just above your head in the streets.
    They jumped from operator cord/plug connections to high tech telephone and cells including internet. Even beggars have a cell phone that they hide when you approach.

    We called the USA while there, you can buy a card and have the choice of 3 competing phone company boxes (all lined up together) to use.....was a good connection though.
    D107
  • nicholas bonham-carter
    nicholas bonham-carter Member Posts: 8,576
    Our own power-data-telephone wiring is beginning to look like that as well. The phone company is unwilling to spend a lot on hard wiring when they can see where the future lies.—NBC
    D107
  • D107
    D107 Member Posts: 1,849
    Yes the phone company would love to get rid of the old copper lines. It's amazing how well things do work in places like India. Somehow it holds together. But with the technology here comes EMF transmissions. Had a tech over for a test. Highest spikes were from old Microwave, Wireless phone and Bluetooth.
  • JUGHNE
    JUGHNE Member Posts: 11,042
    NBC, I realize you are in the metro of the big "O" and might be stuck with AT&T or some form of the former Baby Bell company.
    We were NW Bell but too small to keep on the books. Population of 650 or so. They sold our system to a small independent Coop company...….(smaller than our town) we almost doubled their dial tone connections.

    The way it was explained to me was that a small company as such never had the chance to profit from the long lines of AT&T of the past and therefore were entitled to great low interest loans from the Fed.

    As a result all customers in our pre-fix have fiber to the house with high def TV and high speed internet available. Some of these lines go miles into the country with only a few connections...….plus being a COOP we get nice checks every couple of years as "profit" sharing.

    So is competition better than a monopoly (with Fed low interest money)??? Don't know, but we have excellent service here.

    If we were still a Baby Bell company we would probably still have some overhead drops to customers with maybe party lines.
    (Does anyone know what those were?)
    D107
  • Steamhead
    Steamhead Member Posts: 16,796

    Our own power-data-telephone wiring is beginning to look like that as well. The phone company is unwilling to spend a lot on hard wiring when they can see where the future lies.—NBC

    If the typical cell service is as bad as it is in the Baltimore area, I'll always have a landline. We've had storms that knocked cell towers out, leaving entire areas with no cell service- including around my house and our office. But our landlines kept working.
    All Steamed Up, Inc.
    Towson, MD, USA
    Steam, Vapor & Hot-Water Heating Specialists
    Oil & Gas Burner Service
    Consulting
    D107
  • EBEBRATT-Ed
    EBEBRATT-Ed Member Posts: 15,455
    I have seen similar picture before. What a mess. We have codes and standards TG. Things go bad over here sometimes. Over there how do they know what wire is what??
    D107
  • D107
    D107 Member Posts: 1,849
    @EBEBRATT-Ed Only way would seem to be starting from inside the house and tracing the wire where it came out of the building and then into the 'nest'. I photographed a crew working installing a new junction box of sorts--THAT i can't imagine-- having to re-route or re-connect 1000 wires. They were a very jovial crew. Must have been a crazy few years in the late 1880s in Manhattan when they buried the power lines--after the disastrous Blizzard of '88.


  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 23,170
    Steamhead said:

    Our own power-data-telephone wiring is beginning to look like that as well. The phone company is unwilling to spend a lot on hard wiring when they can see where the future lies.—NBC

    If the typical cell service is as bad as it is in the Baltimore area, I'll always have a landline. We've had storms that knocked cell towers out, leaving entire areas with no cell service- including around my house and our office. But our landlines kept working.
    Applies to the internet, too, around here -- so for us, at least, neither the internet VoIP nor cell service is even remotely reliable. We've had the same copper line -- and telephone number -- since dial came in in 1954, and it still works. Power or no power. Every time.

    I suppose that when that goes, we'll go back to carrier pigeon or courier...

    Oh and party lines? Ours was Winsted 444, ring 3...
    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
    D107ratio
  • Fred
    Fred Member Posts: 8,542

    I have seen similar picture before. What a mess. We have codes and standards TG. Things go bad over here sometimes. Over there how do they know what wire is what??

    Actually, they put a tone generator (small pocket tool) on the line in the house and then go to the termination box outside, on a pole with a clip on hand set on each of the terminations until they find the one that picks up their generated tone.
    D107
  • JUGHNE
    JUGHNE Member Posts: 11,042
    One item of changing to fiber to the house, the copper system is abandoned. There is no 48 VDC on the system anymore.
    It was always a given that your landline phone would work forever with no power in your house.

    Now, there is a power supply box plugged into an outlet in my basement that runs the system once it is inside. The battery it maintains may give you dial tone for 24-36 hours in the event of power failure. You lose your TV and internet when on battery.
    Also as a surprise to the customer we are responsible for replacing the battery.

    Fortunately our village as a power plant that can come on line in less than 30 minutes. People in the country may learn that there is a battery somewhere.

    We have received a flyer with our bill informing us of the battery situation. There will probably be an annual reminder as the landline phone companies seem to have some responsibility to provide 911 service to paying customers.
  • Fred
    Fred Member Posts: 8,542
    edited June 2018
    @JUGHNE Here in Ohio, the cell phone companies are required to provide both customers (no Problem since they have cell service) and non- customers with 911 capabilities for free. That's where many of the older cell phone trade ins go. They are programmed to only make 911 calls.
  • JUGHNE
    JUGHNE Member Posts: 11,042
    Yes, both cell and landline provide 911.
    But what happens if the system falls down...….
    in one case here a backhoe cut a fiber main line a 100 miles away and both the 911 and all cell service was lost for maybe 10 hours. We still had local service within each town prefix.
    If bad things happen within that or any down time then the lawyers get involved and things go into the fan.
    The 911 providers would have to prove that they provided due diligence to give service within their means. ( a fee is added to each bill every month for 911).
    The phone co at the time did have an auto reroute set up but it wasn't functioning. (after that, I would guess it is in place now).

    We were able to provide emergency coverage by radioing to the 911 dispatcher to inform the local radio station if help needed to call a local number here where a fireman worked, the business had at least 3 lines with rollover capability. He then could page out a call with his handheld radio. When the business closed at 5 PM I then had that number changed to my home landline. I stayed at home until about 8PM when the fiber was restored, with my handheld ready to receive calls.
    I did receive compliments from others of the plan we improvised.
    We get only maybe 6-8 911 calls a week for our small district but if no one answers the phone then what??…….could be lawyers involved.

    When we relied upon actual hard wired phones in each fireman house for 911 calls, the cost was tremendous. One reason was redundancy built into the Bell system, we paid double business rate as more than one pair was utilized for this system. Still today IIRC our 911 systems use 2 circuits as redundancy protection.

    Our old phone system used a 7 digit number, before 911 actually became effective, for many years afterwards that 7 digit number, if dialed, would roll over to the 911 system....CYA.
  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 23,170
    "Remember! When seconds count, we are only minutes away". I have the utmost respect and admiration for the emergency service providers -- whether volunteers (sadly, in today's society, a dying breed) as in the town I live in, or paid. And indeed, they saved my fingers some years back when I made a really stupid mistake with a bit of farm machinery.

    But...

    We country folk must, of necessity, be as self-reliant as we possibly can be, and with the increasing dependence on more central facilities and more versatile -- but less robust -- gadgetry this is only getting more so. The days of running to the church and ringing the bell to summon aid are gone -- or are they?
    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
    ratio
  • Fred
    Fred Member Posts: 8,542
    edited June 2018
    @JUGHNE , I don't know what redundancies the Telcos build into their systems but I managed a small telephone/network operation for a company that had 33 buildings on probably 200, maybe 300 acres of land. Back in the early 90's we upgraded our switching systems and also installed buried fiber to all of the buildings. We designed a full loop around the entire campus with that loop passing through each building. If the fiber got cut (which it did on a couple occasions) the multiplexers built into that loop would reverse the signal automatically and all calls would be completed around the cut. We also distributed the switching equipment into tree of the most traffic heavy buildings and had all of the T1 lines (28 channels each) from the public telco come into the switches from two different paths and two different central offices. It was a great system and we had network capacity that took us through until the company decided to relocate to another state for the tax incentives they were offered (about 4 years ago). The complex was bought by a university (that was otherwise land locked) and most of the buildings were torn down. Only about 3 of the original buildings still stand and are used by the university. They have built a couple new buildings and plan another this year.

    If we could do that, most telcos can also do it, excluding maybe rural and sparsely populated areas.
  • JUGHNE
    JUGHNE Member Posts: 11,042
    In our village there is a button on the outside of the Power Plant that would activate the village sirens. It used to be that the sirens blowing would summon 10 to 15 people.
    But emergency responders are so used to getting informed by pager, auto voice phone call and text that the siren would be assumed to be a false alarm or some test.

    As far as volunteers are concerned, as you point out there are less of them available.
    There are so many sports activities for children and parents are so obliged to attend all of them that there is little time for anything else. 50 years ago there little expectation for your parents to attend all activities.
    But the parents of today are of the hovering helicopter type and want to see the cherished "Participation" awards handed out.
    So volunteering for any unrecognized participation such as the volunteer fire/rescue department is way down the list.
    Someone else will do it you know.
  • GBart
    GBart Member Posts: 746
    caption should read

    This is why you have rules and regulations.