The local telecom box

[pucho812]

I may have mentioned the large concrete AT&T building that is next to my neighborhood before. It has no windows and is at least 8 stories tall, what they do in there I don’t know. I never see anyone go in or out and it looks kind of like horror film set.
Today an AT&T tech was working on the local box that is in my neighborhood.
I snapped a photo. The entire setup is not labeled and every twisted pair is either yellow and black wire or purple and white wire. This does not look like fun to sort out.

 

[Youngwhisk]

I used to splice telephone cables over 40 years ago, but not into those kind of blocks. It appears all those little ovals on the blocks are numbered so it wouldn't be too difficult to understand. It wouldn't matter what colour the jumpers are. A little tug and you can see where the other end is, then back and forth a little to make sure.

 

[JohnRoberts]

The local switch for my small town is slightly larger than a garden shed, but not much.

JR

 

[Brian Roth]

It's a long story with many twists and turns for me, so I'll try to condense it down.

In 1980 I went to work as Chief Engineer at a 24 track studio owned by an ad agency. After a couple of years I was tasked ("Brian understands all this technical stuff") with buying a new PBX phone system since the system being leased from Bell was maxed out. At that time,AT&T was being broken up so it was possible for third-party equipment to be be connected to Bell by third-party contractors.

I quickly learned the "trade" from the lead tech at the interconnect company we hired to install the new Mitel PBX. After that, "I" (usually assisted by local vendors) installed new Mitel systems at the agencies other offices around the country.

And, in the phone rooms there would be a wiring backboard similar to this:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9e/79/f0/9e79f0f29c9e9169c7eb70d6661bda70.jpg

Bri

 

[user 133392]

I may have mentioned the large concrete AT&T building that is next to my neighborhood before. It has no windows and is at least 8 stories tall, what they do in there I don’t know. I never see anyone go in or out and it looks kind of like horror film set.
Today an AT&T tech was working on the local box that is in my neighborhood.
I snapped a photo. The entire setup is not labeled and every twisted pair is either yellow and black wire or purple and white wire. This does not look like fun to sort out.

That's a cross-connect cabinet between trunks from the switch and individual lines to customers.

The reason why they are all the same color is that the pairs you see are cross-connect jumpers which are usually white-blue/blue-white by default. A spool of cross-connect wire is usually stored in the cabinet.

The terminal blocks appear to be similar to ADC and not the earlier '66 type which Brian shows in a later post. I think I still have punch-down tools for both.

The lineman in the pic looks pretty close to retirement.

 

[PermO]

The old Dutch system had 4 wires paired, red, white, blue, orange
All these wire pairs had the same 4 colors, a main hub cable could have 900 of these pairs.
For counting there was a string around each wire pair, you count clockwise in a circle.
From outside to inside.
Your start pair has a red string, than it's white, yellow, white, yellow, white, yellow... until you reach the final blue string.

A freakin' tedious job...

Imagine a construction site in a field hitting a cable and a guy has to come in and fix that...