Splicer Life. AT&T cable splicing.

Splicer Life. AT&T cable splicing.

[@andrewrixon2347]

I did 15 years as a copper jointer and this brings back so many bad dreams ! Sitting there working on a 4800pr/05 PEUT cable airside at London Heathrow Airport, in a manhole airside with aircraft manoeuvring feet from you, setting your watch by Concorde taking off…..it was fun ! Then 20 years doing business fibre (Ethernet) and now fibre build since December. 61 years old and still learning !

[@chris1dna1]

Thanks for sharing that man! Also, I happen to be in Brandon Suffolk this week visiting family. Headed back to London on Tuesday and then back to California. Enjoying England very much. First time.

[@andrewrixon2347]

@@chris1dna1 have fun my friend. Just remember, in England, if you don’t like the weather wait 10 minutes ! From one jointer to another 😜

[@JohnnyRingo1863]

Many memories over the decades of splicing telephone cable in manholes, pits and Ariel splice cases. St Louis MO once in a great while a boss would pop up on the job site stay a few minutes and leave the bosses were great they never messed with us they let you do our work . I'd do it all again if I were young and had the chance, we were paid well and lived a pretty good life style.

[@pirobot668beta]

We called them 'meat and sandwiches' at 1200 3rd avenue. I was part of a crew doing a huge 'tear-out' project in a working switching office. It was great work...simple enough to not eat your brain, but exacting enough to keep you awake. It was fun at times...closing the splicing tool (cuts wires) sometimes we could hear relays popping and clacking all over the place. We crated up 3 floors worth of gear...making room for #5 ESS...it was brand new at the time. I never worked ESS...there was more than enough work installing distribution frames and new rectifiers in the Battery room. I blew up a wrench working the rectifiers: on a ladder, wrench in hand, I started to fall! Instinct made me reach out, the wrench went right up into an open port on the 440 bus. Big boom, burns on one hand and forehead, copper particles embedded into safety glasses. They sent me home for the day...I was a nervous wreck!

[@curttimmbch]

That's the best job at the fone factory right there. No customers, no boss, just splicing.

[@newboy771]

I was a Maintenance Splicing Technician with Pac Bell, SBC, and then AT&T (1989-2010, 2 years inside, though), but it looks like you're construction. 14 and a half years outside here in LA West and 3 and a half years in Oakland/Berkeley. Interesting job, not always easy. Always appreciated the construction splicers...you did the heavy lifting! Before that, I worked as an Equipment Maintainer (actually a Comm Tech) for GTE in Santa Monica for 8 years (1977-1986). Another interesting job, but construction splicing is a tough gig, and can be lonely doing what you're doing. But the colors! I loved them :). Keep on chugging.

[@phuckphossilphuels5470]

GTE 2yrs..VZW..Then Frontier.. I damn near got my time in to say adios! Mom (retired) started as an Installer back in '83, and she says they couldn't pay her enough to deal with the bs in the industry nowadays.

[@phuckphossilphuels5470]

I fuckin miss the GTE days..

[@jamesmarlowe8231]

Brings back many memories. Spent many hours in manholes. Climbed too many poles. Retired after 32 yrs. Ma Bell & GTE (later Verizon)

[@phuckphossilphuels5470]

Same. GTE... VZW.. Now Frontier. Almost out the door and I can't wait. What a shits show. Shoulda took my buyout when I could of

[@jamesmarlowe8231]

I have heard from a neighbor that works for Frontier. He says it’s worse than VZ. Hard to imagine but VZ was worse that GTE. By the way, GTE was much more employee friendly than VZ. My first company prez with GTE actually visited each work center & would listen to our bellyaching & try to make things better. VZ was NOTHING like that. People are just a number. Glad to take my buyout & say adios.

[@phuckphossilphuels5470]

@@jamesmarlowe8231 It's nothing but DSL complaint/repair tickets... All day everyday. Haven't seen a time/time & a half Sunday OT day in 5yrs. Get this...No1 to work over 40hrs at all unless it's a call out...yiu want extra $ on your check? Go out and sell new service after work. 😂😂

[@phuckphossilphuels5470]

@@jamesmarlowe8231 GTE is how a company should be ran.. 110%. Union Reps were there to back you, money was great...Vzw came in and we couldn't drive our vans home day 1. I should of known then. My mom said eff this, and went to work in the CO until retirement.

[@DJSubAir]

Thank you for what you do, you may not get the praise and recognition on the regular but doing this work is critical. Have a good day sir

[@chris1dna1]

Thank you sir. And to you as well

[@johnjaco5544]

Worked for phone company for 40 years,enjoyed the line crew the most.

[@briang.7206]

Me too I was a systems tech worked outside a lot testing pairs and replacing line repeaters.

[@malcolden7788]

Serv tech here. Southern Bell, Bell South, at&t for 40 yrs. ‘79 to 2019. Worked on too many splices. Not in manholes, but some aerial, and some at ground level.

[@stevesmith8155]

Satisfaction defined. Blessings.

[@j.d.1488]

Ah man. Missed the underground days. 3M mods primarily. Brings back cool memories

[@simplyfacts123]

This man is doing gods work!

[@Turboy65]

That'a nice splice of life!

[@chris1dna1]

Yes it is.

[@nnov_tech_chan7891]

Let Kirchhoff's circuit law be always with you.

[@chris1dna1]

And may Ohms Law be with you.

[@johnnybegood3017]

My dad was a splicer in Manhattan back in the 50's & 60's ---- I was a Switch Technician in Queens in the '80's & 90's (I helped oversee the introduction of the new digital switches in Queens)--- until NYTel became NYNEX .... that's when I got out.....NYNEX had a whole different mentality towards it's people.

[@tred9951]

I’m an air pressure tech for att I see this all the time some of the splices we see are a work of art great job to have I really wish it wasn’t fading away nowadays it’s fiber fiber fiber

[@chris1dna1]

I hear man. And thanks to all you gas pressure guys for keeping the plant going all thru the years. I did lots of fiber as well but never had the same sense of pride and craft as I did working the copper. It’s an art and always a source of pride when I built new splices. And especially proud when I worked on all the older stuff. Those old pulp and layered lead splices are a thing of beauty and craftsmanship.

[@markh.6687]

Wait until he finds the old labels and notices reading "Bell System" and "Western Electric" in that vault.

[@TremendoT]

This is awesome! I wouldn’t mind doing this.

[@chris1dna1]

Thanks it’s been a great career

[@dylanmcconnell773]

@@chris1dna1 how do you get into this career?

[@wesleyreynolds5857]

@@dylanmcconnell773 what state do you live in

[@chris1dna1]

@@wesleyreynolds5857 California

[@chris1dna1]

@@dylanmcconnell773 application to Pacific Bell in the mid 90s. Went to their pole climbing school and then their splicing school and then their fiber splicing school. And then a whole lot of other courses over the years as technologies changed.

[@evilborg]

Did this back in the 80's

[@jordansibbald8745]

Southern BC in the Rurals here we have nothing that big here. Even leaving the CO it dont get that big 😆.

[@martaamance4545]

Yeah, but can you do a 2700 pair pulp cable fold back, takes about a week using B-wire connectors, less time using 3M modules. I''ve even done a few twist and sleeve on lead cable.

[@chris1dna1]

Good one Marty. Oh yes I can. And have! But why would I when the 710 modules work so much better right? As for pulp, yes. Many many pulp splices. I personally loved working pulp. Even better was the older layered lead, paper wrapped, paraffin wax filled splices I rehabbed. 2700 pairs with pic a bonds. That was fun. Lol

[@martaamance4545]

@@chris1dna1 Glad to know the old skills have not been lost. Depending on where you worked in California, the old district system determined what connectors you got to use. Pac Bell didn't phase out B-Wire connectors until about 1977 and chose 3M modules initially. Unfortunately those modules had a bad habit of opening slightly creating a lot of problems. When I went into the maintenance side (back then one had to be a top quality splicer and we were treated as 'Gods') our district switched over to Scotch-Locks for the smaller jobs and maintenance. We tried Pic-A-Bond, decent product for through and butt splices and eventually the company went all 710 modules. I think the company replaced all the old aerial lead cables (both health hazard and great overtime money maker in the rains - got to love squirrels) and most of the underground lead. The only time I ever say lead cables being pulled through the manhole ducts was when a gas station underground tanks leaked, gasoline won't go through lead cable. God, that was a hard job, fumes in both manholes, an emergency crew standing by all three shifts while we did the cut over. And the brown shoes always wanting to know why we were taking so long. The best construction jobs were the ones you got on a nice sunny day up in the hills, a lot of areal work, cutting in terminals off my hooks or diving board if the cable was 200 pair or so. Maintenance was different, we had so much trouble (mostly due to all the aerial back yard lead) that most of us averaged a minimum of 1000 hours of overtime a year. I was single so my average would reach about 1300. Sixty hours a week was like a vacation and had a dozen or so 100 plus weeks in five years, always in the worst weather. After 15 years I went inside, central office -ESS, worked on every different model. Life was different inside, fair amount of overtime working cutovers from crossbar or step-by-step to digital. I saw a lot of changes, most splicers and linemen I had known were laid off and had to work contract and later they downsized us, so I retired and went to work for an ILEC as a data and voice engineer, most everything was fiber and we did telephone (POTS and Centrex), Internet, Cellular, and even CATV. Those were heady days in high tech communications, then the great telecom bust came and a bunch of us were laid off and permanently retired. I wish you good times to come until you retire. A splicer's life is still a great one, even better when you've got a good crew to work with. More than anything, it's the pride in quality craftsmanship that makes the job worth doing. I'm 76 and there are still times when I miss the work of the early days.

[@NoObligationToday]

@@martaamance4545 Where did work at in california? I worked in East Bay in SF Bay Area . I hired right off the street into cable maintenance in March 1979. All I know the construction splicers were pissed that these green necks took the job they wanted. I learned from a kind soul who was a Korean war vet. He taught me well. His name was Larry Lopes. He forgot more than most splicers knew. I was a mtce tech for 21 years and then I trained new mtce techs. I then became a engineer then closed out my career being a Contract Administrator for cable mtce for dig ups and cable replacements. Retired in April 2015. Great career but went downhill when SBC bought Pacific Bell.

[@martaamance4545]

@@NoObligationToday I was hired on in 1972, I would have started in June of 71 but the CWA went on strike and that pushed my hiring date to January 72. I worked the south bay area, mostly San Jose as the central point. We went as far south as San Martin, as far east as the San Antoine Valley (east of Lick Observatory), parts of Los Gatos, West into Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, and as far north as Fremont and Palo Alto/Menlo Park. I also worked in San Francisco for a few months, but that's another story. You might remember the Santa Cruz Mountain fire and the following floods/mudslides. Yeah, spent time there doing part of the rebuilding with the Santa Cruz/Monterrey garages. Well, when the settlement came we started hiring women into outside craft, that was about 1976 or so and about two later we did direct hire of both men and women into cable maintenance. I went into cable maintenance about 1977 and the first thing they told me is that I would spend a year or two fixing my own fuck ups, not far from the truth, but then I was a top quality splicer. I always maintained that a maintenance splicer had to know how the work was done by the routine crews if he wanted to properly trouble shoot the problems. If you started as a 'maintenance splicer' you started with a handicap. I worked routing crews, buried crews, and even rehab crews, the last is what got me promoted to maintenance. For quite some time the maintenance crews were know and the overtime hounds, that is why the construction splicers were pissed. When you are doing 1200 to 1500 hours of overtime each year, then construction crews who are luck to see maybe 500 to 600 hours of overtime are bound to be pissed. When I left cable maintenance and went inside into ESS switching ( about 1982) I learned that engineering had replaced so much of the old lead cable and the old maintenance crews with bitching they could not make the payments on all their new trucks and cars. Well, life is hard. Switching was a different world and I could write a book on that subject. We had our overtime but not to the extent that I had in outside craft. Twice I was given temporary promotion to first line, once in outside craft and then in switching. My garage second line manager thought he could get me to manage a crew while providing high output (units) for the various jobs. After three months I went back to craft, he had no intention of making my promotion permanent. The second time was in the last days of the 1990s after we had been acquired by SBC. We lost so many first lines that I had members of my own switching crew begging to take the promotion offered. Well, all those wonderful switchmen kept complaining and wanting favors and after two months I went back to craft. I 'retired in 1998 with 26 years. The new district which now covered south bay and north bay needed technicians and it decided that it would limit the number of employees who could take the buy outs. I had 26 years and could not get Christmas, Thanksgiving, or almost any holiday for vacation. What is more, I was number 19 on the list for early retirement and would never see that offer. So I retired and took the buyout. I had had enough of the bull shit. Six months later I had a contract with Bell Canada in Toronto installing an international 5ESS switch. Then I went to work for ICG, a CLEC before I was laid off in 2001 with the Telecom bust. So my telecom career spanned quite a range of positions, from cable splicer to telecom engineer (University of Denver offered a masters degree in Telecommunication Design and Management) ICG paid for the courses, but that is another story. After that with a quarter million telecom professionals laid off you couldn't find work anywhere. so I ended up getting a Class A License and dragging a flat bed across the 48 states for five years. I was a high tech junkie, into all manner of equipment, software, and so forth. Three other engineers at ICG and I were designing our own start-up and ready to launch when the telecom crash came. Yeah, I used to be someone. I taught classes in Softswitch Technology, wrote several technical books (never published due to the crash), Chaired the IEG Conference on VOIP in the telecommunication network (held in Amsterdam). Now I am just a relic of those years and have turned my back on technology. You may love technology but it will never love you back. And even the old cisco CCIE certification, the gods of the internet, they cheapened the certification. I was almost one of those gods, had one more test and the hands-on test to take. My CCIE number would have been a low four digit number. I hear they are running into the high five digits. So yes, telecom has changed quite a bit sine 1972.

[@chris1dna1]

@@NoObligationToday San Francisco. Entire career. 610 Brannan St garage.

[@kuniszamorano1090]

Props to you brother sumbody gotta do it, I'm just wondering how 😂😂

[@timleisseure9573]

ill never complain about a 288

[@Likeaudio]

Amazing

[@briang.7206]

I was trained by an old timer that hired on in 1950.

[@DT-vl8xm]

I know where MY 10mm socket would go

[@chris1dna1]

@@DT-vl8xm lol

[@Fester_]

"When I say your daughter talks too much, I mean she talks too much." Splicer life 2024.

[@chriswendschlag1856]

im good but you do you.

[@sparkplug1018]

How on earth do you keep all that straight is what I want to know

[@JohnH1370]

Everything is color coded. Easy once ya catch on and learn code. Also have a slide calculator.

[@sparkplug1018]

@@JohnH1370 Seems like there’s not nearly enough to code those really large ones, props to the guys in the pit keeping it all going

[@segaoldschoolsega925]

can someone teach me i want to know the ins and outs and steps to troubleshoot the whole enchilada , tools etc etc reading maps 😢

[@chris1dna1]

Takes years buts it’s a dying trade

[@andrew121410]

Are those telephone wires?

[@chris1dna1]

Telecom and Data circuits yes.

[@andrew121410]

@@chris1dna1 That is crazy.

[@UQRXD]

Rats nest.

[@nazirkhan5503]

Very well Bor . which country is it???

[@chris1dna1]

USA

[@joshua43214]

Could be worse, it could be raining in there...

[@jordanrules6643]

Any dangers about this job?

[@kevinn4393]

High amounts of lead exposure high amounts of asbestos exposure Risk of gases in confined spaces. And those manholes are usually filthy, junkies slipping there needles in the manholes.

[@williammain3247]

I have heard some guys have a pair or should grow a pair, but this is too much. 🤣

[@chris1dna1]

Hahahaha. Good one my man.

[@jezzuz01]

just got into the position from being a #DPT. man this is what i'm looking at huh?

[@chris1dna1]

Sorry man. No. Not even close. Good luck in new job man.

[@jperdman1]

Roach's ?

[@chris1dna1]

Yea. All the time. lol

[@johnnybegood3017]

LOL.... from what my dad told me .... Lots and Lots !