This month, OSP® Magazine is focusing on being Green. When I think of that, I think of companies who consume renewable resources, who recycle large amounts, and products that don’t pollute, etc. But how do the OSP managers and technicians contribute to a company’s Green goals? It’s really not hard: simply implement a proactive maintenance program that includes an efficient electronic isolation process.

You may be rolling your eyes because you know that I harp (and sometimes rant) on this topic regularly but there is a strong Green element to a proactive approach. The primary result is fewer truck rolls, thus fewer emissions, less road damage (that requires resources in order to complete repairs) and less digging (not good for the land although it may have the positive effect of getting rid of those darn gophers). And, while it may not appear under the heading of Green, you are more efficiently utilizing a technician’s time and potentially creating a long-term happy customer.

Proactive Maintenance Supports Green
When a customer’s service is interrupted, three methods are used to restore service. Two are reactive and waste a lot of time, effort, and fuel.

Method #1: The Part-Changing Mechanic
The first reactive method I refer to as the part-changing mechanic. When everything tests OK and the customer still complains of a service interruption, a flow chart falls into play.

First, the line is tested and the line tests OK. The customer is contacted and told everything is OK and, if the problem occurs again, to call back. The customer calls back, and a field technician is dispatched and closes the ticket “found OK out”.

The customer calls again and the supervisor tells the next technician, “Find something.” The field technician then changes out the inside station wire, and proceeds to tell the customer to call again if they are still having problems.

On the next customer call a field technician transfers the customer to another distribution pair, and the next technician changes out the feeder pair, and the following technician changes out the central office equipment. Five truck rolls and more than 10 hours work using more than 20 gallons of fuel; the customer is back in service.

Method #2: Divide and Conquer
The second reactive method of troubleshooting is what I refer to as the divide-and-conquer method of shooting trouble.

The customer complains of static on the line. The dispatched field technician goes to the residence and proves the trouble out of the residence. The technician then goes to the customer’s terminal and proves the trouble into the cable. He then goes to the cross-connect box and proves the trouble into the feeder or distribution plant. If pairs are available he then moves the customer to a new circuit.

If no pairs are available the technician goes half way and identifies the direction of the trouble and goes half way that way. Eventually the trouble is proven to a terminal, pedestal, or a section of cable.

If the trouble is in the section, then the field technician identifies a good pair in that section and swaps copper in that section to restore service rather than finding the root cause (e.g., a wet splice or encapsulation, water in the section, or sheath damage).

Keep in mind if the root cause isn’t identified and repaired by rebuilding a pedestal or terminal, digging up and repairing splice or sheath damage, or replacing sections of cables with water present, even more customers will be affected and more unnecessary truck rolls will take place.

The above two methods of troubleshooting reactively waste hours of valuable proactive time and burn untold gallons of fuel with countless unnecessary truck rolls to restore service.

Method #3: Use Advanced Multi-Functional Test Sets
Now here’s the third and proactive method, one that helps your company support a Green approach. Some companies are using this method today (unfortunately not enough):

Reduce truck rolls by using electronic isolation with a quality multi-functional test set with a Resistance Bridge to locate shorted, grounded pairs, and pairs with crossed battery. The Open Meter in the set gives the distance to open cable pairs and the Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR) feature of the set gives a picture with distance to the cable faults. These multi-functional test sets eliminate the divide-and-conquer practice of fault locating and the part-changing-mechanic method.

These testing capabilities also present a visual picture of faulted sections of telephone cables to identify splice or encapsulation failures, water in sections of air core PIC cables, sheath damage, and their locations.

This method also further reduces truck rolls, and creates happier customers by fixing multiple problems that may crop up down the line. Additionally, this method makes your boss happier because it provides the business case he needs to justify cable replacement.

Two Requirements for Effective Proactive Maintenance
First, a solid proactive maintenance and electronic isolation process works only if the technicians understand how to use advanced test sets and all the capabilities available to them within these sets. While companies will spend anywhere from $2,000 to $8,000 per test set, many won’t spend just a little more to provide the training required - training that ties in good outside plant processes with advanced equipment training. That means the sets are underutilized or left in the truck.

Second, without a proactive management team, technicians can work their heart out and still not get results for quality service. The management must provide time for the field technicians to peruse root causes of service failures, to fix bad splices and sheath damage, rebuild terminals and pedestals, and replace wet sections of cables to eliminate future troubles.

Go Proactive - you will also Go Green and keep customers happier.

Signing Off
If your company is doing a good job of becoming more environmentally aware, give me a call or send me an email and I will write about it. You can reach me at 831.818.3930 or dmccarty@mccartyinc.com.