This may sound like a strange question. I received this question from a member at a sparky site and to be honest, I was a bit stumped. I had really never given it any thought.

In 1991, GTE took over the Contel operating area here in Virginia and in many other parts of the country. Even though GTE had it's own stadards for circuit marking, etc., they continued to use Contel's. Even today, with GTE now being Verizon, they still follow the same standards that were originally set by Contel.

Here's the way a typical pedestal or even a building entrance terminal is marked:

312
C6
3082

My first guess was that the 312 might be a cable number; the C6 has some type of purpose as a facility identifier, and the 3082 is the cable length from the feed source. Since I live in one of these areas, I did a little experiment on my own and the "3082" does appear to follow my thought that it's a distance marking.

In Bell areas, Verizon continues to just mark pedestals with just the street address number and nothing else. Oh, and no, that "3082" is not my street address number.

Here's a picture of what I am describing. This is a pedestal in my front yard that was installed in 1991 when Contel was still there:

[Linked Image from i98.photobucket.com]

Anybody out there who might be able to shed some light on this question so that I can assist this guy?

Ed Vaughn, MBSWWYPBX