I have a customer that has a 50 pair cable coming in from the street. A contractor accidently cut the cable. There are only three lines in use on the cable.
I thought that I coud identify the live trunks with my toner.
When I stripped back the insulation I found that the pairs were not twisted and the color code is completly different from anything I have seen.
My question is, is there an easy way to identify the live lines without stripping back each wire and going through the process of elimination?
That would take forever. Maybe some kind of tester like what electricians use for line voltage, the tester beeps when it senses voltage.

Thanks

Tom

That cable belongs to the telephone company! Not on ly not your responsibility, it is off limits! The contractor should have called repair, he did it. NOW, you call the TELCO, rat out the contractor and get the cut fixed the correct, and might I add "LEGAL", way.

Can you go to the BET and see what pairs are being used or tone back from there?

And is this the service providers cable or your customer?
Because if it belongs to the SP, you don't want to mess with it, but I doubt they would use non-standardized cable.

Sorry, I was typing while John was posting.
Good advise John. :thumb:

And at the CONTRACTOR'S expense.

And charge the contractor for loss of business suffered.

Don't know the rules over in your neck of the woods, but you'd get in big trouble here for messing with a phone company cable. Guess he should have called for a locate and have been more careful around the cable.

Recently at a job in Southern California, the general contractor asked me to move an entrance cable from one wall to the other. It would have required disconnecting the ground and "bullet" bond, disconnecting it from the protector, pulling back the cable, cutting off a piece of AT&T's conduit, and reinstalling it onto the protector. I told the general I would not do it and he would have to call AT&T. When the tech came out, he told the superintendent that messing with their cable is a violation and Homeland Security could be involved!!!!

When I stripped back the insulation I found that the pairs were not twisted and the color code is completly different from anything I have seen.

Well yeah, after YOU stripped back the insulation. :scratch:

Don't be a typical electrician and think you can handle this. Like I always tell you guys- it's not your job!

-Hal

Hal, apparently it's not our job either...I would not mess with at&t's cable even though I am sure I could do a much better job lol

I'll bet that the pairs are indeed twisted, otherwise it wouldn't work properly as a telephone cable. You probably have not exposed enough pairs to see the twists. Most telephone distribution cable is manufactured with very few twists per foot, to avoid adding unnecessary length (and therefore, more resistance and capacitance) to the pairs.


Do the wires have dots, stripes, etc? What are the color combinations that you see?

There are cables with odd-count, even-count, central office code, switchboard code, and other specialized codes. There are cables in which the pairs are all the same color.

We would love to see a photo of this non-standard cable. I have been working on cables for 45 years, and have yet to see one that I couldn't identify. Do you have the facilities to take a picture and post it here?

The short answer to your original question is "yes" there's a way to identify the pairs, but I suspect that you don't have the proper tools or experience to do it. As the other guys have correctly stated, it's not your job to fix it.

Easy - you just need the LEC's OSP charts (I'm sure there is a better term for that), go back to the previous cross-connect point and put a tone on each individual pair and trace them that way!

In all seriousness, if you are using only 3 of the 50 pairs, there is a very good chance that that 50 count is bridged to multiple locations, and any fooling with it (shorting or letting it get wet) could affect up to 50 other subscribers. Contact the phone company ASAP to get it fixed right.

so you feel your a better splicer than the trained guys from the LEC who do it for a living ?

:rolleyes:

Skip, I never said that. I am just saying that any of us who do inside work could figure out this outside plant issue. Of course I realize it is the telco's responsibility so they should be the one to fix it, not the OP. Lighten up...

Geeze, I KNOW I'm not a better splicer that the LEC guys. I do one about every 3 years :-)

I also can't do it for less, because I have to buy my splice cases and materials one-at-a-time.
However, in the Spring, I can get 2 or 3 small count splice kits...as long as they're gone before October, I'm good. Skip, you don't have that problem, although I still think the shelf life of the kit is less than 6 months.

About 5 years ago I did an outdoor splice at a concrete batch house. I guess it still works because we replaced thier phone system last year and have not had any service either on the cable in 5 years or the phone system after the Spirit had flown.

I don't own a 3M MS-2 splice tool, and I don't want to. A 25 or 50 pair is still spliceable in a 2x12 enclosure. The enclosure comes with all the hardware and sometimes the potting compound. I keep remembering what a wonderful time I had doing 900 pair cables...it keeps me from wanting to ever do it again.

Carl

Still no update or pix on the color code.

sure you did Jeff , "I would not mess with at&t's cable even though I am sure I could do a much better job lol " your words , not mine

If you have seen any telephone room that at&t has worked in, then maybe you will understand what I meant...again this is not the point of the thread. If you have an issue with my post then PM me.

I guess I shouldn't hold my breath waiting for the description or photos.

Nahh, he's gone, one post wonder. We didn't tell him what he wanted to hear so he either bull-headed his way at it or asked the same question on a sparkie forum where they gave him all kinds of useful "advice". We see it all the time, these are the guys who just can't say no when they see the possibility of making a buck. Doesn't matter that they know nothing, it just isn't in their genes to pass on it and refer it to somebody who does. They'll do anything just to bill the customer.

-Hal

i think you shall use 20+1 or 10+1 pair cable,this would be better in FTTx solutions.and modules is easier to find

Im sure there are others but in 40 years the only other color code I remember was the Jap code on NEC and Hitachi crossbars. Something like blue, pink, green, 1 dot 2 dot 3 dot 4 dot. Thank God they were only 25 pr. or you would be counting dots all day.

Back after WWII the Japs made ball point pens and telephone OSP cable ... and it did NOT have our standard code. A lot of small independent telcos bought it CHEAP...and it's quality was CHEAP!

The Chinese response was similar to our old lead OSP counts...only ours was a larger count then a spare pair.

MY TWO CENTS