US Telephone System: Rural Outside Plant
owl writes:
http://cityinfrastructure.com/single.php?d=RuralOutsidePlant&t=Rural%20Outside%20Plant
Another section of this web site talked about outside plant, which is the telephone company's term for the cabling and other equipment which connects your home telephone to their Central Office.
This diagram shows an overview, and below are some pictures and descriptions of how outside plant is different for rural areas.
The main differences are that the Central Offices are typically smaller, and the cable distances are much greater.
[Editor's Note: A few weeks ago we ran a story about a cold war hardened shelter which generated a reasonable discussion. This is another one of those submissions which show how regular everyday systems are actually put together and maintained; in this case part of the standard telephone system. It is informative and I discovered several things about a standard US telephone cabling that I did not know before e.g. some cable is pressurized with air to help prevent water ingress, but it provides additional benefits to the engineers who have to maintain the system.]
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