This may sound like a strange question. I received this question from a member at a sparky site and to be honest, I was a bit stumped. I had really never given it any thought.

In 1991, GTE took over the Contel operating area here in Virginia and in many other parts of the country. Even though GTE had it's own stadards for circuit marking, etc., they continued to use Contel's. Even today, with GTE now being Verizon, they still follow the same standards that were originally set by Contel.

Here's the way a typical pedestal or even a building entrance terminal is marked:

312
C6
3082

My first guess was that the 312 might be a cable number; the C6 has some type of purpose as a facility identifier, and the 3082 is the cable length from the feed source. Since I live in one of these areas, I did a little experiment on my own and the "3082" does appear to follow my thought that it's a distance marking.

In Bell areas, Verizon continues to just mark pedestals with just the street address number and nothing else. Oh, and no, that "3082" is not my street address number.

Here's a picture of what I am describing. This is a pedestal in my front yard that was installed in 1991 when Contel was still there:



Anybody out there who might be able to shed some light on this question so that I can assist this guy?

Lead, by rotation, and cable number, and footage.

Contel 1979.

Ed

Do your homes have street addresses ?

TJ:

Yes, mine is 7913 Wxxxxxx Maxxx Dxxxx, which is completely unrelated to the pedestal markings. There's also no relationship to building lot numbers when the neighborhood was built.

Contel's numbering scheme follows no geographical logic that I can see. Perhaps it's all just a record keeping process that's completely unrelated to the physical location.

Ken:

Tell me more!

Around here they just started marking the pedestals!
The one by my house says F25467H.
I was told that F means front. 25467 is the address and H is the start of the street name...

I believe that the first 3 digits are the remote or CO that the cable within the pedestal comes from.

In Manassas, VA 311 is apparently the CO, and 306,307,308 are all remotes.

The last 4 digits do seem to indicate footage.

By the way, Contel uses the exact same scheme on poles, even when they've got 5 cables on them.