Pots

[Pants]

If I'm going to provide VoIP support, then I guess I should consider providing some degree of POTS support since they are integrated in some cases. But how much should I know about telephone wiring in a building or office?

 

[Pants]

58 views? SOMETHING is wrong. Is the question not understood or is it just retarded?

 

[angry_geek]

I'll chime in.

I know enough about pots systems to get by. I can handle everything just fine from the nid to the rest of the building. I actually do some calls once in a while for a company out of New York. However, I do not, will not, support any of those systems. Walk into an office sometime with 4 x 25-pair runs into the closet and a dozen 66 blocks with jumpers everywhere. "We're getting some static on line 6." Yep, not touching that.

Do you want to be a phone guy, or a computer guy? We work with a local business phone outfit. We send business back and forth all the time. This is what you want to do. As for what to learn: learn how a single line works, then scale up. Learn how to work with ground blocks, 66 blocks, etc. As for the systems: if they're old, good luck finding the manuals. You'll need them as those old systems are programmed with macros from an extension.

I wish you had posted this a week ago. I just recycled our old Nortel system and 6 extensions. You could have had some fun.

 

[twincountycomputers]

I'll chime in.

I know enough about pots systems to get by. I can handle everything just fine from the nid to the rest of the building. I actually do some calls once in a while for a company out of New York. However, I do not, will not, support any of those systems. Walk into an office sometime with 4 x 25-pair runs into the closet and a dozen 66 blocks with jumpers everywhere. "We're getting some static on line 6." Yep, not touching that.

We do about the same, I HATE walking into a closet and finding the work of 27 other technicians in a building that has had 10 different phone systems, nobody seems to care when installing new stuff that as much of the old stuff as humanly possible should be removed... there should not be 1 punch down block feeding another feeding another feeding another feeding another finally feeding the phone switch.

We spend extra time when installing new systems to rid a closet of as much crap as possible usually trying to leave nothing but the following:

1 set of wires from NID or EMTA to one punch down block, wires from punch down block to phone switch, wires from phone switch to another punch down block, existing wiring from punch down block to extensions.

 

[rsarceno]

I do a lot of Voip and you don't need to know a lot about POTS.

When you order a line, ask the phone guy to extend it and pay the extra $75 or so and charge it back t the client. If you decided to extend it yourself, just remember is one pair per line.

POTS provided better quality than SIPs but SIPS are usually cheaper and no installation fee.

For a reliable 911, always have at least one POTS and the rest can be SIPS

Configure the Voip to fall back on POTS during power failure.

This pretty much covers everything you need to know about POTS.

 

[Pants]

I see. VoIP seems to be something I could support, but I know they are systems integrated with POTS in some cases, so if I support VoIP then it seems I would have to know a bit about how the POTS runs through the building.

I know I'm not going to be able to provide every single service out there, but if I can know a little bit about the service I can't provide I can avoid loosing money to outsourcing, so when finishing writing my service agreement, I have to decide whether I want them to come to me for everything, and handle the outsourcing for them, or have them handle all the stuff I don't do, by themselves. The former seems the better choice because you don't want techs coming in messing up what you've done on their network without some of your intervention, and it would make the client seem like you care more if you are involved more. Then again, if I've got them committed to so many hours per month, while outsourcing I might have to take a loss and use some of that money they gave me to another company for stuff I don't do.

Maybe I could have my clients who are under a service agreement contact me for everything and just figure out a way to minimize the profit loss for the outsourcing while having the third party company bill me instead of my client.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Do you want to be a phone guy, or a computer guy? We work with a local business phone outfit. We send business back and forth all the time. This is what you want to do.

Same here...I'm a computer guy, I leave the phones for the phone guys. We have a guy we contract work out to, he's a retired foreman from the old SNET days. Best of the best! He has his own company now that does phone systems, alarm systems, and our data wiring including fiber. I leave the phone stuff for him...give him that business. Depending on my client..I may resell his services and take a bus fare for myself...or just let him bill direct. And he refers us work in kind.

 

[Pants]

Do you want to be a phone guy, or a computer guy?

Indeed. At some point in their IT career, one must look deep within and ask this question.

I want to be a computer guy. There are those services however which deviate from general computer repair and computer networking support, which a lot of IT firms offer. If I'm going to offer service agreements, I want to know some of that other stuff at least, to minimize loss to outsourcing.

 

[brandonkick]

I can see both sides of the blade here.

You can stick to your strengths and only support those services and technologies upon which you are a master in and those that you know
you can provide outstanding support for. If you have good relationships
with those companies that can offer support for the items you cannot,
and you know they hold themselves to a high quality of service, then you
can work with them. Often times you refer them for the work you wouldn't
be comfortable doing and they do the same for you in return.


OR

You can spread yourself as far as you possibly can in areas of support so
that you can keep everything in house, including profits. Just make sure
that the quality of your business and service isn't going to suffer just so
that you don't have to subcontract anything out.

 

[Pants]

Good perspectives here. I knew I could get this thread rolling.

 

[RA|Consult]

I used to work for a cable company installing telephone service. Sometimes it is absolutely terrible! Splice after splice after splice and you end up running post wire everywhere just to get a backfeed. Other times an alarm guy screwed things up and about 5% of the time the modem is offline or out of spec. If it is out of spec, unless you already have the tools. You really won't know! Look into a signal generator (expect to spend at least 100 for a good one, don't be cheap is my solid advice on purchasing) If you have static on a line it is most likely interference and you will be replacing a lot of junk. NID's are easy, telephone works of electrical signals so any conductive material touching the phone wire is going to do something to the line. Think twice before spending hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours on Voip or POTS lines ... they will both bite! Or you could also pick your battles!

Hope this helped you!