sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General Telecom News 45,000 Verizon employees on strike

The very same holds true for the five boroughs of NYC, which is all I've ever known on the basis of personal experience.

We used to have a similar process but our MTTR average was close to 8hrs at that time. Lost time between dsipatch Q's, waiting on a cable tech if needed, and then the ticket getting passed back and forth between cable and cirucits, was causing excessive time on tickets. So our district manager formed a "Tag & Test" crew. These techs work hand in hand with our CO/Network guys on all installs and repair tickets. This has cut our MTTR average in half. It works really well, we never have to wait on cable if needed. It may cost the company a little extra on tickets where they weren't needed but if sure keeps our customers happy. We are in a somewhat rural area here. Most of our circuits are on copper with many of them on repeater'd routes. I'm sure if would be different in a metropolitan area. As a side note in this area CO/Network handles all the Central Office work, we maint and build all the spans to our concetrators and DSLM's, we install and maintain all our circuits. We also maintain all of concentrators as well. So needless to say we stay pretty busy.

We have a "test & tag" crew but for installs only.

If I'm out of copper spares on a T-1, I call one number.

If I'm out of spares on DS0 or any other special circuit, there's a different number.

Should I face a dead mux, here comes the third number.

What I just said is *for repairs only*. If I have a roadblock of a similar nature on an install, it gets even more complicated.

I'm certain that there's got to be a simpler way, but who am I to say anything...

BTW, a former foreman of mine had moved to Sarasota and was begging for me to come down...I wasn't up for it at the time. He's a CO manager somewhere down there, at least he was the last time we spoke a couple of years ago...he did state that a lot of things were very different in the respect of how the company ran its business...

Ed and Jeff, many thanks for well wishes.

Yep, ajkula66, you got that right: There is a huge difference between the Bell System in New York and GTE in Western Florida. Despite the fact that they are both owned by Verizon Corporation now, a century of different company practices can never be completely merged. That is a big contributing factor to the records clusterfork that exists in this region.

Get plenty of rest this weekend. You guys are going to be busting your asses on Tuesday. Welcome back.

You know, I read practically every posting on this forum, and most of the time I only comment if I really feel the urge.

I nearly sprayed my coffee all over the screen. You are a true comedian. I am having trouble even finding the right keys to press, I am laughing so hard.

I'm certainly glad they have stated they will now bargain seriously. Heck of a note when you have to strike just to get them to do that. Just shows what jerks they are in my opinion.

Too bad they couldn't just agree to extend the contract in the first place instead of spending the money they did to bad mouth the workers.

I was on the conference call this am and sounds like the leaders are hopeful of a just settlement, but they feel it's weeks off.