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Undersea Fiber Splicing Contract

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AvayaNovice

Vendor
Apr 6, 2003
459
US
I might be awarded a contract with a carrier that has some cables running from California and Washington to Japan.

My contract would be for the OSP splicing and repair of their cable (which is a 4 pair single mode fiber, also including a ground and 4200 volt power cable for their amplifiers which are in the ocean).

The cable lengths that I'd be responsibile for are 1.5 miles long, and are beneath the city streets from the beach to their carrier's substation.

So... here are my questions.

Fusion splicing -- no big deal. Splicing the power for the amplifiers I'll sub out to an electrician because I haven't got an electrical contractor's license -- and I don't even want to mess with it.

So let's say someone does break the cable (it's in 4" PVC conduit surrounded by cement, and is well marked -- so very unlikely). I can splice it, not even worried about that -- but what do I do to repair the conduit? In most cases, I'd say put in a pull box there, break the conduit back a bit and put my splice case in the pull box, enough said. But if it's in a city street -- no way. Second option is to put an enclosure with entrance and exit of the conduit, place the splice case in there, and then bury it and pave over it. OK... that might work?

Another option is to put a sleeve over the conduit and seal it, but I can't fit a 6" wide fiber splice case in there...

Any ideas? What's the norm for this? This is a unique application that I've never dealt with. Most cases... you just run another conduit and pull the cable out of both manholes, put new cable in, and splice twice in the manholes... but that again is out of the scope of this.

Or maybe I should talk to the client more and see if this contract is only for splicing to get the cable back up and running (This is a ring network by the way) until they can get a permanent splice in with new conduit.

Not sure...

Any one enlighten me that's done any work for fiber carriers.
 
Interesting dilema, I'd sure want to know all these answers and the level of liability before accepting any contract with that.

It's a bit outside of what I deal with, but I suspect there may be a temporary restoration process followed by a real rebuild situation. Maybe there is an enclosure that is set up for concrete encasement like that.

I'd nose around with who installed the cabling and see what they do. Please let us know what you found out, sounds like an interesting case indeed.

Sounds like fun!


It is only my opinion, based on my experience and education...I am always willing to learn, educate me!
Daron J. Wilson, RCDD
daron.wilson@lhmorris.com
 
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