I was doing a site survey for a job I'll be doing in the next couple weeks and when I got to the MPOE I found this:



And here's the bigger picture:



I've been into a lot of MPOEs and demarcs, never seen that before. The bottle is clear glass with a rubber top, the stuff inside appears to be some kind of green gel (not liquid, not solid), like the cured LSR I used to test in a lab a million years ago. The wires inside are the 15 pair unused from the 25-pair carrier feed.

Every day's a new day.

Looks to me like the end of a cable run and someone cleared the ends.

WE HAVE A WINNER !!!

Yes, it is the end of that cable, the ends cleared and capped. Some used gel (re-enter-able compound), some used epoxy. Common local practice in aerial PIC cable.

Not too often found in buried ... cable cleared and tied. The ICKY PIC , if of a larger gauge, would have insulation "creep" so it was connectorized with splice connectors, not the "bottle" .

Thanks for the memories.

I've never seen it done that way, just using 3m UCC connectors. They look like the UY size but they are red and don't have the metal clip inside.

This was a popular means of dead-ending pairs in the 1960's and 70's. Although that one looks home-made, there were actual kits sold by 3M and various other manufacturers. They had a foam pad in the bottom of the container to keep the wire ends from touching and the goo held them in place.

That's interesting...never seen that before

Thanks, all. It did come off an aerial cable. Never seen that done, in any manner, in the gazillion MPOEs I've been into around here.

You'd wrap the group once around your finger and cut it with snips at a slight angle, unwrap and no two wires were the same length, then cap it. As Ken said, pre icky pic.

In an aerial splice, we would clear the ends of an unused group by putting them in a shake & bake.