Don McCarty

I think it is time to talk a bit about safety.

For those of you in Triple Play, I don't have to tell you about the problems that can be caused by dirty power. It's something that comes up in my classes and keeps my phone ringing when I'm not training. One of the most frequent questions is about noise from electric fences

Back in March of 1990, I ran a test for field technicians in OSP magazine. There are many new techs out there and many new technologies so I’m going to run it again. This is a test for the new technician in the Triple Play business using that Last Mile of copper.

Noise Mitigation is one of the many tasks a quality cable maintenance technician will occasionally encounter. Sadly, few techs receive any training on noise mitigation and yet related problem can cause expensive troubleshooting and repair and involve long hours. But there is good news….

The RBOC's stand is absolutely justified in my mind, but the fault is not the use of the breakdown test set or the TONE ARC, but the misuse of the test sets and not following proper safety procedures.