Broadband in America from an insider.

reading all these old posts brings a little warmth to a cold industry. Just got cross trained in Fiber, 2 day OJT was pulling fiber drops through 1" telephone line conduit using the copper drop as the pull string. Laguna Beach, CA. Hills, rich A-holes and a F'n **** show for records on where this conduit actually goes! We fed a 300 foot fiberglass fishtape into a conduit and we hit 290 feet when we were supposed to be right across the street at about 50 feet. We finally hit something and we kept hitting it with me walking around listening for any noises. We finally found it on the NEXT STREET down the hill, hitting the plastic EDISON vault cover! Yeah, another day in Laguna....We finally closed the tap on copper installs here, not happening here if fiber is on the pole. Now our Union is holding up a sweet contract because they want the entire fiber roll-out to be in house. Hello: we dont have 300 boring rigs or the additional vehicles needed for heavy gang work that will only be a 2 year buildout. They are mandating all this stuff be in house but we can barely fill the operating field positions. Oi veh....