Martin Technical Research: “Steve, I throw this first question out to you: was there any one feature that was of particular interest to you?”
1st Installer: “I like the camera and the end-to-end. Those two struck me as viable and applicable immediately.” MTR: “How would you envision using the camera? Does it solve a particular problem for you now?” 1st Installer: “Well, what it does, is it defines before and after installations. ‘This is what it was like when we’re done.’ We leave, and then we get a call that says, ‘It’s fractured.’ Well, y’know, this camera showed that it’s not, and it wasn’t. It’s just the little things that you get into in your immediate installs -- your new installs -- it defines it and makes it black and white. And it really ... and we have actual documented paper, if you will, that will define it and show that this is what we left you with. So, if there’s additional problems then those are problems that we have to discuss about occurring after our installation. And that defines it.” MTR: “You mentioned the end-to-end test. The pass/fail certification, power meter type test. Is that test so important that you would buy two of these to do that?” 1st Installer: “No. It just makes it easier.” MTR: “How does it make it easier?” 1st Installer: “It makes it cleaner all the way through. You get an end-to-end right away, instead of doing one end and switching and going back to the other.” MTR: “Carl, how about you: the feature that you thought was most interesting?” 2nd Installer: “The camera. The size. OTDRs are usually big and bulky. That’s a nice, small size. It’s easy, lightweight to tote around. I do a lot of climbing stairs, a lot of closets on big campuses. The camera, like I said, I like the feature where you can plug into a patch panel. There’s a new laser speed of Avaya panels, but they’re hard to take apart, to take a look at the connector. That’s a good feature there.” MTR: “Okay. So that goes back to the camera?” 2nd Installer: “The camera. Right. You can put the camera into the patch panel itself and see the fiber connector behind the patch panel. Instead of having to pull it apart. See whether it’s bad there.” MTR: “Would either one of you consider the tool without the camera?” 2nd Installer: “The tool without the camera?” MTR: “Yeah.” 2nd Installer: “Oh, yeah. Because the OTDR for purposes for like the DSP 4000 we use now, and then power meter results, if I have a trouble in the middle -- doesn’t see the remote -- then we have to go back and change the heads. Or shine a light through it and see if you can find light. Because you can’t get which fiber that’s lost. With an OTDR, you can see where it’s broke, or whatever. And having end-to-end capabilities is nice, because you can tell if your fiber’s in the right spot, instead of having fibers flipped in your patch panels. If you have a technician that just happens ... even a good fiber tech -- he messes up on colors. It’s a dark closet and there’s two colors plugged into the wrong spots. And the end test will tell you they’re in the right spots. An OTDR will not tell you that. So, the end-to-end test availability is a plus.” MTR: “Okay. Scott, how about you?” 3rd Installer: “I definitely like the size and the camera capability. And if it were cost-effective to have the end-to-end testing and a guy was going out to buy a light source meter also at the same time, that might be a really neat thing where you have a customer that is requesting OTDR results -- which a lot of them do nowadays. And then it’s like my buddy here was saying, you need to be able to still verify end-to-end. And if you can do that with one meter, that would be slick. Now you’re not carrying around two different meters. You’re not cleaning all these different patch cords and crap, just getting started.” MTR: “Okay.” 3rd Installer: “I think it’s slick. I really like the camera option. If it’s cost-effective, not too pricey.” MTR: “I kinda get the feeling that end-to-end is great ... IF or BUT ... you gotta find another way to do it with one tool. Is that the consensus?” 3rd Installer: “Yeah. To me it would be really nice.” 2nd Installer: “Yeah. You’d have to go back and have two inputs on the OTDR, you could put a patch cord on the other side, to get a loop going through.” MTR: “Hmmmm…” 3rd Installer: “That’s a good idea.” 2nd Installer: “I mean, if it goes in and out between a full loop. It’d show a wiremap of the whole entire loop.” 3rd Installer: “WireScope will do that, and I think Omni will do that.” 2nd Installer: “Siecor will also, if you have a guy that put in new patch cords. You can check the whole loop.” MTR: “Dan, finally to you. What feature did you like?” 4th Installer: “Definitely the size. I would probably never buy the camera. I see it as one extra thing that a careless installer would break.” (Laughter.) MTR: “Oh yeah?” 3rd Installer: “That’s probably true.” MTR: “How do you check ends now? Do you have a regular microscope?” 4th Installer: “I have a 400-power scope.” 3rd Installer: “Have you seen the 200 Leviton?” (Everybody chimes in all at once.) 1st Installer: “Oh, yeah.” 2nd Installer: “They’re the nicest scope in the market, by far.” 4th Installer: “The 400 is so ...” 2nd Installer: “All you see is the core. There’s too much power.” 4th Installer: “It’s too much power. Exactly.” 2nd Installer: “Except for singlemode. The 200 Leviton is the finest scope on the market. 200 power.” 1st Installer: “How much is it?” 2nd Installer: “$165. I just bought ‘em, I know, I bought three of them. For me and my two fiber techs.” (Pause.) 4th Installer: “As far as plugging the camera in -- it’s a neat idea, but I usually just go to the other end of the fiber if I have a problem with a particular strand, and I shoot a light through and if I see that it’s really dim, or I can barely see the light, then I’ll actually take the time to pull it out and look at it. And by that point, I probably need to replace it anyway. So you need to pull it out of the LIU anyway.” MTR: “Okay.” 4th Installer: “I mean, the OTDR we have to, you plug it in and it tells you whether that connector’s bad. You don’t really need to see it; the OTDR sees it.” MTR: “How do you document your ends? Do you?” 4th Installer: “We save our test results and then we just print them, and if the customer wants them, we give it to ‘em. If they don’t -- it’s only if they ask for ‘em. If the customer doesn’t ask for test results -- most of our customers, probably 80% of them don’t even ask for any of our test results. They just trust us and the company that we’ve tested it.” 2nd Installer: “We give all of our test results. Electronically and hard copies both.” 4th Installer: “We keep all our test results. We keep them all.” 2nd Installer: “See, I do all the ASU campuses for the state...” 4th Installer: “Well, they require it. That whole entity, they require it.” 2nd Installer: “...state university and state buildings. My jobs are all the ASU campuses, and they require two copies: electronically and hard copy. With all results: copper and fiber. And he’s told us more or less, (Brand Y) is the only tester he’ll accept.” 1st Installer: “That’s incredible.” 3rd Installer: “If you give your test results to the customer, you have something -- a leg to stand on, when they call you back six months down the road and everything’s dirty. Or you have shattered ends. If they don’t have your test results, man, it’s hard to prove that, ‘Hey, those were good.’ Then, all they can do is trust you.” 1st Installer: “We always take out the original test results. If that were the case, they would just pull it out of the memory of our server.” |
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