OT - are there telco lightning protection guidelines?

[Mark Szidik]

I worked for a ILEC (not Ameritech) for 4 summers while I was in
college.  I only saw one instance of ligntening damage during
that (admittetly short) time[0].  At your house there should be a
little grey box that has a "protector" in it.  This is supposed
to be surge protection and it sits on the telco side of the
demarc [1].  You could probably ask the telco to test it out - if
you have hade lightening damage I would guess that its not
working.  However, I am still suspicious that its AC power
related.


[0] Totally bizarre occurence.  Tree got direct hit and it
entered the cable running underneath it and blew out about 6
houses phones around the corner and a 1/4 mile south. One phone
actually started on fire - I saw the scorched phone book that was
sitting underneath it.  Wires were actually blown off of the
house and were laying on the ground. lots of melted plastic.
All this happened with formerly working protectors installed at
each house (we replaced all of them).  Only the one house had
inside damage (i.e. the flaming phone).

[1] demarc is the spot where telco ownership/responsibility ends
and yours starts.  Given this knowledge I would guess that
the testing should not cost you anything, but you know how
strange the world of telecom monolopy is....

-Mark

On Mon, 20 Aug 2001, Mike Rambo wrote:

> I've had now either 4 or 5 modems, a motherboard, a sound card, 3
> answering machines, and my phone damaged over the last 4 or 5 years or
> so. All the telco ever says is it has to be the incoming power supply.
> They ignore the fact that the damage has _always_ been on the telephone
> interface of the device in question. I have never had a failure in any
> power supply circuit of the device in question and have never had a
> device fail that did not have a telephone line attached.
>
> While I can generally repair the answering machine and telephone, smoked
> motherboards and modems are usually a different story. Besides I'm
> getting plain sick of doing the work.
>
> Does anyone know if there are any protections, minimal or otherwise,
> that telco's are required to adhere to in providing service?
>
>
> --
> Mike Rambo
> mrambo@lsd.k12.mi.us
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