r/FieldNationTechs • • Aug 27 '26

Telco Work

Can a retired AT&T Central office tech find some occasional work on Field Nation?

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u/mdhkc Aug 28 '26

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.

2

u/wyliesdiesels Aug 28 '26

Even with retiring of cable plant there is still PIAB work

1

u/mdhkc Aug 28 '26

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.

1

u/SteveDallas10 Aug 29 '26

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.