What's the purpose of the coils?

[carlyai]

 

I see these coils of telephone and internet cable everywhere.

 

Why leave the coils?

 

I thought it may have been for cable loading, but that's probably a bad guess.

 

And look at the CAT fibre installation. It's the same all along the street. No wonder it doesn't work after a month or so.

 

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Seems like the pix upload failed.

 

Try again.

 

Sorry pix upload failed...?

[tjo o tjim]

Are they loops in the air?  Those are generally done for pre-cut/pre-terminated fiber and to allow some re-working in the future. They can be designed to handle a failure of a pole, but that is less typical.

[carlyai]

Try and upload the pics again

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[canuckamuck]

 So when the pole busts off they got some to spare. Up where I live that's fairly often.

[Curt1591]

It's slack to allow them to splice the wires when they are cut.

What's bad is all the left in drop wires. Whenever someone changes carriers, rather than reuse existing facilities, new one are place and the old ones are left up. The government needs to require the providers remove the drops when service is disconnected.

[carlyai]

Spose it's too difficult to terminate the wifi cable up the pole and get rid of the coils of wire. Usual mob doing the initial instalation don't have long enough ladders in the back of their bashed up utes.

How do they ever fault find a telephone cable fault? Back-in-day we connected a pulse echo tester on the faulty line, we knew the propergation speed through the telephone exchange and thru copper so we could calculate where the fault was. How can they do that here with all the wires coiled up?

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[tjo o tjim]

2 hours ago, carlyai said:

How do they ever fault find a telephone cable fault? How can they do that here with 

Lengths are marked on the cables, so your fault tester gives the distance and you subtract from your starting length. 

[Emdog]

"Why leave the coils?"

Didn't bring a wire cutter?

Boss gets kick back on purchase of wire?

[esclub]

It’s not wire. It’s Fiber optic cable and you can not just join Fiber like wire by butting the two ends together using connector blocks. Typically you need at least half a meter of Fiber to be cut back to resplice if required. 5 meters is the norm to be coiled at each side of a splice point to allow future resplicing if necessary  but elsewhere this is usually hidden underground in manholes. The huge coils we see here in Bangkok are overkill  wasteful and the lack of proper cable dressing is just laziness. The splice enclosures (the black boxes where the actual Fiber splices are) are often not sealed properly with cable entries left open and accessories not used. I imagine when Thais build their purchases from Ikea there are a few spare parts left over too.

Edited August 10, 2019 by esclub

[klauskunkel]

Their purpose is to test the leaning capacity of the poles they are attached to. When a pole starts leaning one way the loop crew will maybe think about putting the next loop on the other side. Or not.

[Soundspeed]

Yet you like the cheap internet access. Try connecting to the NBN in Australia - they don't leave coils on poles so much and for this ' neatness ' and a shiny truck you can pay $99 a month. Here you get what you pay for. Bashed up ute and all.

 

[Curt1591]

8 hours ago, tjo o tjim said:

Lengths are marked on the cables, so your fault tester gives the distance and you subtract from your starting length. 

Watching the various fibre techs trouble shooting the cable around here - with is often, due to an abundance of squirrels - they confirm it to the furthest working termination, then eyeball the drop for any faults. Fibre has no resistance. You need a load to gauge distance.

[Skyking]

You need a TDR to gauge distance.

[bankruatsteve]

Not just the poles.  When I had fiber installed (free from the gov. !) they left this (photo) at the wi-fi router and about 20m cut off.  And that is great for:  the optic part is good for "string" to tie stuff and the cable carrier is good for, well, cable if you need it for whatever.

[KhunBENQ]

5 hours ago, esclub said:

It’s Fiber optic cable and you can not just join Fiber like wire by butting the two ends together using connector blocks.

And fiber cables must not be bend arbitrarily but keep a minimum radius depending on type of fiber.

That's why the coils have nearly same radius.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bend_radius#Fiber_optics

 

 

[KhunBENQ]

5 hours ago, Emdog said:

"Why leave the coils?"

Didn't bring a wire cutter?

Boss gets kick back on purchase of wire?

No, boss will kick you if you cut a fiber cable with a wire cutter

[carlyai]

Lengths are marked on the cables, so your fault tester gives the distance and you subtract from your starting length. 

@tjo o tjim

So the coils are just another drop wire for future expansion and not part of the signal path? That makes more sense. Have to have a closer look.
Thnks.


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[carlyai]

Yet you like the cheap internet access. Try connecting to the NBN in Australia - they don't leave coils on poles so much and for this ' neatness ' and a shiny truck you can pay $99 a month. Here you get what you pay for. Bashed up ute and all.
 

Well it's not cheap if it doesn't work.

It's amazing in my small village of a couple of hundred people. We have: CAT fibre, 3BB fibre, TOT fibre and now a True mobile tower and fibre connection. All 100 m away running down the (only) main street.

So the word goes around the village CAT has a special on, so we change to CAT. That lasts a couple of months then continually breakes down, so the word is switch to 3BB, on special. That has lasted a few months now continues to break down, so the new word is TOT is on special.
I already have CAT and 3BB fibre cables to the house, so when I get the TOT cable, I'll probably just keep switching providerd chasing the specials.
If these all fail, I can probably get a portable router and switch to TRUE.

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[Singhajon]

22 hours ago, carlyai said:

Spose it's too difficult to terminate the wifi cable up the pole and get rid of the coils of wire. Usual mob doing the initial instalation don't have long enough ladders in the back of their bashed up utes.

How do they ever fault find a telephone cable fault? Back-in-day we connected a pulse echo tester on the faulty line, we knew the propergation speed through the telephone exchange and thru copper so we could calculate where the fault was. How can they do that here with all the wires coiled up?

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Are ex you PO?

[Curt1591]

1 hour ago, Singhajon said:

Back-in-day we connected a pulse echo tester on the faulty line, we knew the propergation speed through the telephone exchange and thru copper so we could calculate where the fault was. How can they do that here with all the wires coiled up?

Back in my day, with copper, we simply used a volt ohm meter and looked at the "kick". After a while, one would get good at correlating distance. We measured distribution and feeder cables, to isolate the fault between terminals. If the trouble was in the drop, we simply replace it.

Here, most of the "coils" I see are drop wire, feeding individual subscribers. With all the squirrels around my hood, splicing drops is a way of life. The coils give the slack needed for splicing the drop back together. They are carrying signal.

I have noticed that squirrels prefer 3BB and AIS over True cable, 3BB being their favorite. They chewed through mine 8 times in 3 months. I finally stopped it by having 3BB spray paint my drop. They thought I was just another stupid farang. However, I haven't had an outage in close to 2 years. 

 

[sandyf]

On 8/10/2019 at 3:13 PM, esclub said:

It’s not wire. It’s Fiber optic cable and you can not just join Fiber like wire by butting the two ends together using connector blocks. Typically you need at least half a meter of Fiber to be cut back to resplice if required. 5 meters is the norm to be coiled at each side of a splice point to allow future resplicing if necessary  but elsewhere this is usually hidden underground in manholes. The huge coils we see here in Bangkok are overkill  wasteful and the lack of proper cable dressing is just laziness. The splice enclosures (the black boxes where the actual Fiber splices are) are often not sealed properly with cable entries left open and accessories not used. I imagine when Thais build their purchases from Ikea there are a few spare parts left over too.

The "loops" have been around a lot longer than fiber.

Right about fiber, they left a loop between the entry to my house and the router, for possible repairs the man said.

[carlyai]

Are ex you PO?

ex PMG

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[carlyai]

It’s not wire. It’s Fiber optic cable and you can not just join Fiber like wire by butting the two ends together using connector blocks. Typically you need at least half a meter of Fiber to be cut back to resplice if required. 5 meters is the norm to be coiled at each side of a splice point to allow future resplicing if necessary  but elsewhere this is usually hidden underground in manholes. The huge coils we see here in Bangkok are overkill  wasteful and the lack of proper cable dressing is just laziness. The splice enclosures (the black boxes where the actual Fiber splices are) are often not sealed properly with cable entries left open and accessories not used. I imagine when Thais build their purchases from Ikea there are a few spare parts left over too.

This post really solved my mistery.

The cable splics black boxes seem to be positioned at street junctions etc. So that's a tick for planning and future expansion.

With the good installations, there is this coil (5 m) before and after the cable splice box. So for the main street: 3BB, CAT, TOT, there are 3 sets of coils and the black splicing box.

So for my next question: all the provider cables run towards the nearest major town whick is 25 km away. So I think the cables would run to a site and go back by microwave. Right or wrong again?



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[bubba45]

On 8/10/2019 at 6:02 AM, carlyai said:

Spose it's too difficult to terminate the wifi cable up the pole and get rid of the coils of wire. Usual mob doing the initial instalation don't have long enough ladders in the back of their bashed up utes.

How do they ever fault find a telephone cable fault? Back-in-day we connected a pulse echo tester on the faulty line, we knew the propergation speed through the telephone exchange and thru copper so we could calculate where the fault was. How can they do that here with all the wires coiled up?

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When 3BB ran the fiber from just up the street to my house they had one ladder barely long enough to reach the box where they began the run.  After that they used a bamboo pole to push the fiber up over nails, protrusions, or branches to get the fiber to my pole, then over the wall to my box.  They literally used a tree branch as there was no pole in an extended area along the route.  

I've been here over 30 years and I'm still appalled at the s**t they do.  One of the major reasons I live most of the year elsewhere.

[tjo o tjim]

On 8/12/2019 at 5:30 PM, carlyai said:

So for my next question: all the provider cables run towards the nearest major town whick is 25 km away. So I think the cables would run to a site and go back by microwave. Right or wrong again?

Typically the “backhaul” goes to fiber first, and then it gets pushed out to the neighborhood level, and then to the customer level. Microwave is usually only used for extremely remote locations (islands, etc.); good bandwidth over microwave gets expensive quickly. 

[taninthai]

When 3 bb arrived 

On 8/12/2019 at 5:33 PM, bubba45 said:

When 3BB ran the fiber from just up the street to my house they had one ladder barely long enough to reach the box where they began the run.  After that they used a bamboo pole to push the fiber up over nails, protrusions, or branches to get the fiber to my pole, then over the wall to my box.  They literally used a tree branch as there was no pole in an extended area along the route.  

I've been here over 30 years and I'm still appalled at the s**t they do.  One of the major reasons I live most of the year elsewhere.

When 3BB arrived at my house and I told them I want the cable underground from the pole to inside my house the guys were not to happy ...they were telling the wife over the phone we not waiting for ferang blah blah.....got a draw wire in the pipe and helped them pull it in????.........yes I have the 3 meter coil hanging on the pole by the electric meter.

[carlyai]

Typically the “backhaul” goes to fiber first, and then it gets pushed out to the neighborhood level, and then to the customer level. Microwave is usually only used for extremely remote locations (islands, etc.); good bandwidth over microwave gets expensive quickly. 

Thanks, but we have a new True communications tower built about 200 m line of sight from our place. It's a typical mobile/handphone tower with 4 enclosed aerials at the top. No microwave dishes. I've had a look and can see 1 fibre cable from the tower going back along the road towards the nearest major town. So I presume that this cable either goes all the way to a switching station or by microwave to a switching station.

So if I have a True SIM card in my phone and use the internet, is my phone signal received by the tower and then fed back via the fibre cable to a switching centre?

What I was thinking of doing (as 3BB, CAT and TOT WiFi services are all problematic), is install a yagi from my house pointing at the tower. Connect that to a portable WiFi router and hope this gives me a better service than the other mobs.

I like to watch the football on the weekend, but with say 3BB WiFi, signal drops out. Not the RF signal, but when it starts to buffer, and I do a speed test, the bandwidth goes frim say 40Mb to 0 up and down, and when the signal stops I have to reload my browser as everything drops out of sync.

Any thoughts?

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[carlyai]

Had a look at the True tower this morning and a couple of satellite dishes have been installed.

So now I think that the handphone mobile communications is rèceived at the tower and relayed via satellite back to a switching centre in Bangkok. If this is the case, it would make my line-of-sight communication very fast.

Send pix tomorrow and maybe someone with more knowledge can explain the communications setup.

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[carlyai]

Here is the True tower setup. There is one fibre cable coming into the base station from the road. The satellite dishes seem to be pointing upwards to a satellite and not horizontal to other subscriber dishes.
The dishes are small and I can't remember if dish size affects bandwidth or just power.

So I think it works like this, but I'd like someone to explain it better.
The antennas on top of the tower transmit and receive signals from handphones. These are sent to the dishes and satellites back to a switching centre in Bangkok. The fibre cable comes from subscriber's houses (wifi etc) and sent back to the switching centre by satellite same as the handphone signal.

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[Peterw42]

24 minutes ago, carlyai said:

Here is the True tower setup. There is one fibre cable coming into the base station from the road. The satellite dishes seem to be pointing upwards to a satellite and not horizontal to other subscriber dishes.
The dishes are small and I can't remember if dish size affects bandwidth or just power.

So I think it works like this, but I'd like someone to explain it better.
The antennas on top of the tower transmit and receive signals from handphones. These are sent to the dishes and satellites back to a switching centre in Bangkok. The fibre cable comes from subscriber's houses (wifi etc) and sent back to the switching centre by satellite same as the handphone signal.

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The dishes look like plain old Television dishes, just getting the TV feed for local cable distribution. Those type of dishes only receive, they dont send.

Edited August 28, 2019 by Peterw42