Verizon is especially bad about sloppy OSP fiber plant. I've been many places in the country and Verizon takes the cake. For example, they use pre-terminated fiber drop cables to buildings from the terminal. If it's too long, they just roll up the slack and hang it at the pole. Multiply that by say, 20 drops feeding homes from an alley and you get my point. AT&T (and others) allow their installers to actually terminate the fiber drop wire in the field, yielding much less slack at the pole. I once assisted a Verizon technician performing a FiOS installation in Virginia. The drop was about 60 feet, with another 20 feet needed for routing down the building, etc. He only had a 250 foot cable on the truck, so he just slapped the excess up the pole and used cable ties to hang the coiled slack from the strand. He knew it was wrong, but he said that they didn't have any other lengths in stock at their shop. As for splice cases, they always have to leave enough slack so that the entire case can be brought inside a splicing vehicle. With that said, they often leave 100 feet+ of slack at the pole. They used to use "snow shoes" that were used along the strand to store this slack, but they don't even bother anymore. They take them down so often that they just roll up the slack and tie it to the nearest point of attachment they can find.

Outside plant, especially in the Bell System, used to be a work of art. They formed copper cables and splices to resemble the neatest plumbing. Not any more, that's for sure.


Ed Vaughn, MBSWWYPBX