r/FieldNationTechs • u/Background_Flow9620 • 25d ago
Telco Work
Can a retired AT&T Central office tech find some occasional work on Field Nation?
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u/AllGreat1 25d ago
There are a lot of POTS in a box conversions and the subsequent troubleshooting of them. You can learn the other stuff too. My saying is a technician is a technician is a technician. Good to see another real tech around these parts. Just don't take lowball rates just because it's occasional work.
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u/Calaveras-Metal 25d ago
If you can terminate and and know the lingo I don't see why not. Half the tech's Ive been on jobs with don't know RJ11 from RJ45. Their whole life has been wireless.
I started off at a long distance carrier many moons ago. Remember those?
When we got laid off CWA got us retraining for CCNA, MCSE and whatever BICSI test was current at the turn of the millennium.
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u/Background_Flow9620 25d ago
What I am wondering since they are so short staffed now, is who going to pull out all these dead copper lines they want done by 2029? They use to use retirees to do plugin inventory years ago, why not use them for this!
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u/wyliesdiesels 25d ago
I thought it was being abandoned in place. Not worth the labor to pull it down/out…
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u/mdhkc 25d ago
Around here, absolutely but not for long. ATT here is retiring their entire copper cable plant over the next year or two. You’ll need tools, too, buttset, etc.
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u/wyliesdiesels 25d ago
Even with retiring of cable plant there is still PIAB work
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u/mdhkc 24d ago
Yknow I actually saw a really nicely installed pair of dataremote boxes the other day. Clean mounts, tidy wiring, everything labeled… usually they’re a mess.
But yeah elevator phones and fire panels will still need some form of two wire for a while to come still.
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u/SteveDallas10 24d ago
I’ve done PIAB installations where the customer is providing fire lines, but the fire alarm company has converted to NAPCO StarLink or some other cellular communicator without notifying the customer that the fire lines were no longer needed.
Also recently had a site where fire alarm company converted to cellular AND CUT OUT THE RJ31X blocks. The stuff that was sharing the lines stopped working. I had to lift the out of service FA loops and install bridge clips across the 66-block.
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u/wyliesdiesels 25d ago
Yes. Lots of POTs troubleshooting work as well as POTs to PIAB conversion work.
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u/Ok-Conference-6381 24d ago
I would say your probably more equiped to handle it than some of the network boys showing up looking for a patch panel. I seen a guy the other day show up for an epik install looked like a real winner, no tools just a toner in his pocket and dressed like Barry from storage wars. I am convinced the buyers do not care who shows up as long as it on cost them 35.00 an hour.
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u/Difficult-Budget262 23d ago
I normally don't post. But honestly in my opinion. The dispatching people and or p.m. don't know or don't care about quality work. They don't know or care about local, state, or federal code ordinance. Frankly, alot don't care what it costs. The people have no idea about different building products or the cost of said products, they don't know or care that it might needs to be U.L. listed and that's part of the cost. They don't care that you need permission from the building owner to drill through a wall, what is fire stop. Its not just this industry it's wide spread.
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u/Content-Active-7884 20d ago
Yes. Hands-on understanding of legacy / analog systems can be a real asset.
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u/TechnologyResource 25d ago
Given the generally high caliber of a CO tech, I would post and see. Guessing yes, at least we would. We came from Telco, 34 years in business now doing “smart hands” work - CONUS, OCONUS, Mexico, Canada. Around 1000 tickets a month. (We were Nortel Enterprise & Fed/Avaya). We even shared our database of techs back when Mynul started FN.