sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Telecom Service & Providers Rural Hum Issues

Does that street light operate properly during the night? I.e. starter not blown, causing light to work then go out then turn on, wash/rinse/repeat?

That looks like a standard splice case on the pole there.

The street light does not operate at all. No power to it, no bulb in it.. it's not live.

I just discovered something interesting, tonight.

https://www.hoppes.us/~matth/layout.jpg
That is the layout of the lines. I am basically at the end of the main cable run. There is a smaller cable that runs out of the junction box, and goes on down the road for about 3 or 4 miles and serves two customers. Those customers have almost no hum on their lines, and measure in at just about 2 volts.

A closer look at the junction block:
https://www.hoppes.us/~matth/junction.jpg
Main line continues on straight, and the smaller feed feeding the two customers goes off to the right.

I doubt it is worthwhile, but just out of the layout.jpg picture on the right, the line feeding the two customers with no hum goes to this pole and continues on:
https://www.hoppes.us/~matth/2plus.jpg

Meanwhile, the customers connected to the 'end of the line' (3 of them) have 9 or 10 volts on their lines and extreme hum... I just measured 12 volts on my line tonight!!!

Well, as Bill said, either the telco fixes it or you do. Unless you want to be the 'Subscriber Crusader', you might as well fix it yourself. But, if you want to be the 'Subscriber Crusader', get all the folks with hum to complain and document, twice. Then send a petition, with documentation, to the PUC, registered mail, with copies to the Telco AND your legislators. But, take swimming lessons first! ( ) John C.

It is a remote possibility but ask the phone company to look at the line translations. I’m making a guess that the serving C.O. is a 5ESS. I saw range extension mentioned several times in the post. There used to be a field that if set incorrectly would cause a hum on the customer line. The longer the loop, the more the hum sounded. We used to call the field the ground reference bit or the SLC bit. I’m not sure if this is still a usable option. Some of the active C.O. guys may be able to share more light on this.

@bf6b5yr - And when set incorrectly, it would create hum AND generate AC on the line/not ground the line correctly?

Never had occasion to measure the AC. I suspect that it would make the line more susceptible to AC induction since. I do know that it will cause a very noticeable hum. The longer the loop the more you hear it. We encountered this type of problem a good number of times. We’d have a tech call the C.O. to ask about a hum on the line. When we looked at the line translations we found that a clerk in a center had added the feature when it wasn’t required. Like I said, it’s a long shot.

Long shot, sure, but it is worth asking thanks for the input. I'm about at wits end, since I discovered that junction box (Ready Access Drop) last night and realized that two lines that go off from it are fine, and three that go the other way aren't! That leaves about a 40 or 50 foot section of cable to be bad (which I guess it could be).

I don’t have access to any manuals but the paragraph below from a Teltrend manual makes reference to the feature that I’m referring to. Setting it to yes when it wasn’t required would produce the hum.

5-ESS Applications
2 . 0 4 If a Teltrend AUA39I4 is used with an AT&T 5-ESS® Electronic Switching System, the 5-ESS line assignment parameters for the circuit can have the ground reference (GND REF)attribute set to either YES or NO. The AUA39I4 supports rotary dial and flash-hooks with a 5-ESS floating battery line appearance, and simultaneously maintains CLASS compatibility with transmission of Open Switching

Frontier was just here because of a DSL outage at my house... When he arrived, he unplugged the line outside and plugged it back in and it fixed it. Regardless of how many times I restarted the modem I couldn't get it to come back up.

That aside, I asked him about the power influence. He said that he had gone along the other day and cut the cable, tested, and respliced and that the power influence and hum does not 'appear' in any one place but just gets worse as the cables gets longer!

Any thoughts on that? Is there perhaps a power influence source further up that is just becoming more pronounced as the cable gets longer?