The Telephone
cables.
It was 1984;
I was working as a junior engineer at the telephone exchange Raichur. I was trained
in switching [strowger] technology and therefore they put me for an indoor job.
The exchange equipment was built on
electromagnetic principles. Mechanical switches were used to switch a call as
per the calling party dialing signals.
To maintain the switches in working order, technicians were employed
on a routine basis throughout the day and night. A senior man known as Mr. Kasikar
was the manager of the indoor system. As I was a new fellow, they employed me
to update the connection records of working customers. This was needed to
settle the billing disputes of customers.
I did
prepare such records with the help of office assistants/ operators staff. As a
young fellow, I was getting bored as my work was confined to indoor table work.
I intended to work outdoors as a field officer, and I expressed my desire to
my boss SDOP Raichur Shri D S Ugarkar. Thus I was posted as JTO Cables and
Outdoor.
The struggle:
The external
plant constitutes underground cables and overhead open wires as part of the
telephone system. This was subjected to frequent interruptions due to breakdowns or contact [loop] faults. Attending to interruptions was the main work
involved. Open wire faults could be easily located and attended to, by a
sectional lineman. But when cable fault occurs, it was hell to localize the
faulty portion.
For
this, there used to be a team of people like a cable jointer, two laborers [mazdoors],
and the section lineman and JTO Cable has to manage the show, and attend to
the interruption as quickly as possible in order to keep customers happy.
The process [on cable faults]:
- list out the interrupted telephone numbers,
identify the location of the DP[distribution point],_ the end point of
cable from where the connections are served, etc.
- Take out the route map of the cable buried in the
ground; make a foot inspection to checkup if any new pits were dug on the cable
route etc.
- Find out if there is any joint in the cable,
nearby. Then ask the cable jointer to dig and localize the faulty cable
section.
One Mr. Mohammad Hussein was working as a cable jointer. He had a tool kit of jointing materials, an earth megger to test
for low insulation, and earth digging apparatus.
Paper-insulated copper wire cables of 0.5 mm diameter were used to construct cable
links. If such cable gets punctured the moist mud enters into the bunch of
wires and almost all the conductors were grounded and the potential becomes leaky. No
potential reaches to the customer's equipment and the phone is dead.
The management problem:
The worker should be well trained, he
needs to be encouraged to take risks, and he should be well paid to keep his workers
happy, [the manual laborers]. If the fault is localized within a couple of days,
and restored by a suitable jointing process, things will be ok. If it takes
more time, things will change to hot discussions and unpleasant tension prevails
between the management and the customers.
Network tree of cables:
The exchange is a place, to facilitate the interconnection of telephone lines for a moment so that a phonic conversation
takes place between two parties. That means there should be a permanent
physical line of conductors between the exchange and the customer‘s house. And
for instantaneous use at any time there should be a DC potential of 50 volts
between the conductors. This type of working is called a central battery system.
When
the system is started with a few lines, say less than 20 lines, they could have
been built on open-wire lines to start with. As the system grows, the numbers
are classified street-wise, and underground pieces of cables are laid into the
streets to a suitable centre point. These cables are joined to a main cable and
linked to the exchange machine. The electromagnetic switches respond to the
customer’s dialing and the connections were established and disconnected
automatically.
If
however the line breaks, or a short circuit happens, or the wire is grounded, the
system does not work and the line is declared as faulty. The customer can not
make business by his phone.
Field trial:
Within
a week of my joining as JTO Cables, there developed a fault in the business
locality and dozens of phone lines went out of order. SDOT ordered me to set
right the problem. I nodded, but confusion and uneasiness developed in my mind.
The previous in charge JTO was out of the station, and I did not have the cable
route map nor any experience in handling such situations.
However, we as a team went for foot patrolling and made some inquiries here and there in
the middle of the main bazaar. The cable jointer and others associated with
cable explained to me of the multiple cables running into the street.
The
problem is, there is not a single cable in a street; they lay cables again and
again in different periods of time to meet the demand, and therefore to identify
a specific cable out of many was again a problem.
There
was one senior operator who had earlier worked as a cable jointer and I knew him
as I was trunk exchange in charge for some time. We made patrolling and this
man gave his experience with the underground matters of the Raichur cable network.
We had hope now. On a detailed enquiry, we came to know that there was a fresh
digging at a point in the bazaar. We re-dug the place and found the paper insulated
cable got punctured and our jointer Mr. Mohamed Husain attended to it and I was
saved of embarrassment!
The
industrial area was far away from the main town. Most of the industrial portion
of the town was beyond five kilometers area. And it was very much in need of
new connections for business activities. The SDO phones asked me, ‘Had the old
cable faults have been attended it would be easy to provide new lines there.’
A working
party was attached for digging and assisting the cable fault localization in the industrial
area. We use to toil daily till the sun sets, digging and analyzing using the
earth megger and we spent almost one week or so. We reached a place where there
was no cable in a section of around ten feet. We joined this missing link to
have some new lines to serve new customers.
The JTO
Cables job was very challenging in the sense, when there used to be
interruption the first man to be responsible was the section officer, the JTO
Cables. Customers used to come with the hope of getting new connection, but when
we expressed our inability to service the line due to a shortage of lines [pair
of cable conductors], they use to say, ‘How is it? A neighbor of my premises is
having a connection. why can not you service my line through that?’ and we have
to teach him the principles of working phone lines. He will be disappointed
and sometimes used to accuse, saying “These people are of no use. I think we
have to speak leaders to transfer such idiots”!
They were
right, in a sense, the system was primitive and advances had to emerge out of the bottleneck. I was one fellow among many officers who were accused for improper
planning and delay in doing the network up-gradations in the country. It was
1985-86 year. About 35 -40 years of Indian independence. It was a big challenge
to meet the growing demand for phone lines for business.
The
parliament was directly involved in formulating the telecom policies and
implementations were arranged on piece-meal, due to so many reasons. The huge requirement
of material throughout the nation was also a reason.
The advent
of microwave systems started in India
But
alas! The man is involved. The crocked ideas of the mind are to be eliminated. The
most challenging task it was, the staff control. If someone working on the
grass-root level, instead of restoring the cable failures, starts creating faults intentionally, only God has to save the situation. But it was a reality, and
that was the cruel mind behind actions, that does more damage.
In that
sense, machines are far better. They are 100% faithful. In fact, the efficiency
of government offices was limited to 60 to 65%!
The story need not be elaborated. ‘Power corrupts and absolute power
corrupts absolutely’ is the saying. The initial cable construction works were
limited. There was only one cable manufacturing factory, in India
If someone
gets a new connection immediately, it would be a seventh wonder. After 1985,
the situation started to better communication drive. The supply chain of
materials increased, and the execution of cable construction was done through contractors,
yet the jointing, and localization of faults was in the hands of a few skilled
workers.
The Yermarus
camp was about seven kilometers away from the main exchange. A single 20-pair
cable was working there, and it went out of order. For such a long distance cable,
fault localization was to be done. It went into weeks to do the things to work.
A VIP stationed there complained to the General Manager Hubli, about the bad
situation of service to Yermarus camp. The general manager came on inspection
to witness the actual problem. I was trembling to face him. But he was very
polite officer and ascertained the method of fault localization. He inquired
about any meters being used to localize the faults. We did not have any meters other
than the earth megger. The advent of electronics touched India
We received
the brand new meter which works on "pulse eco reflection" method to locate the
distance to the fault. One fellow, a cable jointer came on deputation to do cable
work from Bidar. He was trained in using the meter. We applied his knowledge to
locate a fresh fault. The meter worked very fine and just by digging about ten
feet distance we could get the damaged portion of the cable. This was a turning
point in increasing our efficiency in attending to the faults. We were saved!
One story
goes like this. The operator was eliminated, the trunk efficiency increased, the technician
was eliminated the switching efficiency increased. Now if the cable jointer is
eliminated, the local line efficiency may increase. That may be the reason; all
phone mechanics were made cable spillers in due course. At last, the problem creators
were eliminated to some degree.
The
electronic exchange era started in India
The Raichur
office was upgraded to a Divisional office. The number of connections went up in
stages. The waiting list was long. Suddenly one 300 lines electronic switch was
sanctioned and now it was the responsibility of the cable section to arrange for
increasing cable capacity according to the waiting list. Within a couple of weeks, the cable plans were prepared and got sanctioned by the competent authority.
Now cable lying is to be done on an urgent basis to meet the set targets. The divisional
office arranged for the labor force and immediately the process of digging and lying cables commenced. It was a departmental workforce on muster roll with senior mazdoors. One S I Phones was given the
responsibility of keeping the records of laborers and executing the work as
required by the cable section.
The digging
at main road crossings was done during night hours to avoid the traffic
problem. And the cable laying was monitored on a daily basis. Thus by the
financial year's end, the new connections were being put into service. And the
people were happy to get the phone facility to their residences and business places.
The connections crossed the 1500 DELs mark.
The Gulbarga Gulbarga
We
transferred the old cable network to the new PRX switch successfully. But on the very first
day, we could not trace about 200 connections. Again our Divisional Engineer
was pointing to me for the inefficient transfer process. I patiently listed the
reported numbers and went on ringing them one by one. 25% of the problem was solved.
All the joints were kept open to stabilize the system. We could not trace about
25 connections in a particular area. We re-examined the T- jointing of that
cable and there was a punching problem of some conductors. Again there was a
distribution cable fault in the Gunj locality. All the things got settled in a
couple of days.
The system
was growing rapidly. One officer was promoted from Gulbarga
Date of birth: 03-08-1951.
Education: B
Sc Maths and Physics.
1974-
Telephone operator.
1980-
Telephone inspector.
1084-
Junior Engineer.
1999-
Sub Divisional Engineer.
Retired from service on 01-02-2009.
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