CABL Forum - Re: help with ingress? "CHECK FOR CLIP"

Hi Joe,

You are absolutely correct about keeping the customers on at all times if at all possible. This is even more important today since many customers have a choice with competition from providers.

It is very unfortunate that many networks today have been incorrectly balanced and not properly maintained. In this instance, there is no other option but to change pads/equalizers for a momentary interruption of service to correctly balance the network. If there is corrosion in a connector or housing this must be changed as nothing in the plant is self-healing. Under these circumstances only a "quick" splicer or qualifier technician should be allow to repair the network to keep down-time at a minimum. In a perfect world, all forethought would have been used upon initial alignment and construction to minimize future maintenance issues and qualified individuals would be in charge with an unlimited maintenance budget. But that is dreaming in most part today.

Unfortunately many cable TV networks here in the states (unlike the telephone companies) do not have the "redundancy" to keep customer areas up. If the cable companies built a node +1 or less architecture and had the manpower to maintain it on a regular basis, this would most improve the margin for outages and reliability.

Another issue is that many of the system technicians and contractors do not have the proper tools for the job. Many lack the proper training and experience, thus, are sent to perform job duties that are more "experiential" in nature until it works. This is the sad part, the end customer is the one who suffers. In reality everyone suffers. Not all companies have the modern sophisticated equipment to work with, and when a supervisor or manager tells them to "go fix it", they do as best that they can with the knowledge and tools available. Again, a training or budgetary issue.

I have always been a firm believer of TRAINING, TRAINING, TRAINING. Not just for 30-minutes in a lunchroom on a chalkboard while people drink coffee and wake up once a month, BUT in a controlled environment test lab and classroom as we did on the Magnavox/Philips Mobile Training Center that unfortunately went away years ago. Enough on this subject...I am probably making everyone tired.

I do not believe that the majority of the guys here do not care about the customers, but rather have no other choices to fix problems given their situation, or be terminated for not trying.

By the way, CONGRATULATIONS on being one of the MOST RESPECTED and KNOWLEDGEABLE individuals here on the bar!

Are you going to Atlanta for the SCTE Expo next week? If so, I would like to meet you in person as I will be attending.

Keep up the good work Joe!

Greg Tobin
Interactive Broadband Technical Services, LLC

INSTALLATION

CONSTRUCTION / TECH

OFFICE / OTHER

Re: help with ingress? "CHECK FOR CLIP"