Telephoney From the Begining!

Telephone repair can be a daunting task, when you are not sure how it all works. It takes 1 pair of wires to get the signal to your phone. Basically one wire to transmit, one to receive. So the signal comes in on one wire and then leaves on the other. It really is a simple system for the most part. The new carrier of lasers and fiber optics is a simple system too, but it really expands the size and scope of the telephone. I had some exposure to fiber optics but not enough to try to relate to you in my blogs. So my expertize will be with the old standby of a pair of copper wires from the Central Office to your home.

I started with AT&T in 1977 hiring on with Southwestern Bell Telephone as a Cable Repairman. They sent me to a company school to learn the basics of telephone operations. How to carry your ladder safely, how to climb poles with your hooks safely, and many other safety related operations. It was a crash course in company policy, safety and procedures to prepare you for your job with the company. At the time I hired on there was a huge amount of hiring going on and they were trying to get everyone through a quick program and out to the field as quickly as possible. Being a Cable Repairman at that time was one of the toughest jobs to learn when you hired on from the street. I spent 4 or 5 months working with experienced people who were training me as they were doing their job. That was the quickest way to learn. For many weeks at the beginning I was lost but one day my mind clicked and it became very easy. I just had to get my mind wrapped around the process and there were a lot of processes to get. The company would also send us back to school to learn new processes and learn the use of new equipment and proper use of the equipment we had.

Of course being a Cable Repairman we worked on cable problems. The cable being anywhere from a 11 pair (22 wires) to a 3600 pair (7,200 wires) or more. A daunting task when you think about trying to find one(1) pair (2 wires) with the telephone # you are working on. In order to do that you must learn the color code to be able to find your particular cable pair so you can try to fix that cable pair. Many times it takes a very long time to repair a phone line and most customers don't get it so you take a lot of heat from them. That was always an issue every time you went to fix a phone line.