Certified Fiber Optics Technician

[Camman]

I just passed by Fiber Optics Certification test with an 89%, it excites me. Now I can stick a little logo on my business cards

http://www.thefoa.org/F-CERT.jpg

Thought I would share with everyone since it is tech related

[primesuspect]

What does that entail, and what do you know how to do now?

Congratulations :)

[pseudonym]

It means he can plug your optical cable into you speaker system... jk ;)

[Templar]

Congrats. Cool stuff. Just don't stare down the cables :P

Which, by the way, how powerful is the laser emitter for networking fiber optics?

[Thrax]

Depends on the fibre optics.

Some FO cables don't even uses lasers, they use LEDs. Though there are several types of fibre.. LX, SX, multimode, single mode..

[Camman]

Congrats. Cool stuff. Just don't stare down the cables :P

Which, by the way, how powerful is the laser emitter for networking fiber optics?

Depends on the equipment. but, generally single mode fiber uses laser and multimode uses LED

As for people who asked what that means; well I learned how to terminate fiber runs, do fiber splices, learn about different styles of connectors and we learned about the basic principles behind why fiber optics works, stuff like that. The big part of it was learning to terminate the fiber and polish the connectors and things like that. Someone came in and demonstrated an OTDR (crazy acronym: Optical Time Domain Reflectometer) for us which is a little box with a screen on it that you plug a fiber optic cable into and it reads back scatter from a signal it puts into it, shows where cable loss is and faults are, apparently they cost well over 10 grand for a cheap one and more for better ones.

They also demonstrated a $28,000 fusion splicer, that was also on the cheap end of them. Its a thing that automatically lines up two pieces of fiber and super heats it to turn two pieces of glass into one. My school owns neither of them, a technician our professor knows or something brought his stuff in.

[Templar]

They also demonstrated a $28,000 fusion splicer, that was also on the cheap end of them. Its a thing that automatically lines up two pieces of fiber and super heats it to turn two pieces of glass into one. My school owns neither of them, a technician our professor knows or something brought his stuff in.

I'm just waiting for you to tell us about the matter/anti-matter reactor :D

Cool stuff though

[Straight_Man]

I just passed by Fiber Optics Certification test with an 89%, it excites me. Now I can stick a little logo on my business cards

http://www.thefoa.org/F-CERT.jpg

Thought I would share with everyone since it is tech related

That is good to know and have a cert for, if you also have gear for the work, to troubleshoot. Sprint could use you, the contractors around here keep breaking their fiber lines, typically digging through buried fiber runs. Since THEY fine contractors more than $10,000 per hour for downtime on some run cuts, you can imagine what the independent emergency repair techs charge by the hour-- try $100-300.00 per hour depending on work (BUT, it is BYOT-- bring your own tools-- work). Telecom fiber backbone work brings in good money.

John D.

[primesuspect]

There have been times when we've run fiber... No certifications here, but it worked in the end ;)

I can definitely see the need for a fusion splicer. It really sucks that they are so astronomically expensive.. If the tools were readily available, I'm sure more fiber would be run.

[profdlp]

I've been running fiber through my system for years. :)

[Shorty]

Fujikura make some seriously kickass fusion splicers.. I've seen one at Bookham that was a ribbon splicer... now those are savage. Auto-splice and join 16 to 16 :eek:

A few quid mind you..

Good job Canman, that could be a very useful qualification to have :)

[CaffeineMe]

Great job. Got to love the certs, it ALL looks good on the resume!!!

[gtghm]

Good job, now if we could just get the industry going again... :rolleyes:

There is so much dark fiber out there that they don't know what to do with it.

There used to be thoughts that we would be looking at placing fiber to the customer but now I think that thought is changing. The amount of bandwidth that can be sent over a fiber is way way more than any residential customer will ever need.
Its kinda like plumbing in a 12" water main to your house.

But I think that having that skill will be good knowledge as hopefully some of these fiber outfits that went bankrupt over the last couple of years sell off their networks to people that have the ambition to try and figure out how to make money with them...

If you want to really make money look to copper telephone splicing. Those guys can average 70 tp 100 Gs a year for connecting twisted pairs together.... And usually they are Union too....

Cheers,
"g"

[Camman]

Good job, now if we could just get the industry going again... :rolleyes:

There is so much dark fiber out there that they don't know what to do with it.

There used to be thoughts that we would be looking at placing fiber to the customer but now I think that thought is changing. The amount of bandwidth that can be sent over a fiber is way way more than any residential customer will ever need.
Its kinda like plumbing in a 12" water main to your house.

Cheers,
"g"
Actually, my instructor for the course said that the industry trend for fiber products is on the rise. He seems to think everyone is gearing up for "fiber to the premises" as you mentioned and that the industry is going to explode soon. I don't intend to make Fiber Optics my career, it was a course offered at my school that seemed interesting and now I got the certification to put on my resume, just building up the experiencing and trying to make myself have a higher dollar value :D

[csimon]

:celebrate congrats on your certification cammam

[ttrostel]

Good job, now if we could just get the industry going again... :rolleyes:

There is so much dark fiber out there that they don't know what to do with it.

There used to be thoughts that we would be looking at placing fiber to the customer but now I think that thought is changing. The amount of bandwidth that can be sent over a fiber is way way more than any residential customer will ever need.
Its kinda like plumbing in a 12" water main to your house.

But I think that having that skill will be good knowledge as hopefully some of these fiber outfits that went bankrupt over the last couple of years sell off their networks to people that have the ambition to try and figure out how to make money with them...

If you want to really make money look to copper telephone splicing. Those guys can average 70 tp 100 Gs a year for connecting twisted pairs together.... And usually they are Union too....

Cheers,
"g"

In the Dallas Fort Worth area Verizon is running FTTH (Fiber to the House). The only reason that it took so long is because the laws would not allow the phone companies to carry T.V.. That all changed last year when Texas became the first state to allow it.

[MrBill]

Congrats on your certification. We had a contractor break a 6-pair FO cable and we had to call someone in to fix it quickly as part of our operation was shut down. It's hard to haggle over price in some situations.

[Thrax]

This was posted in 4-6-2004.

[MrBill]

This was posted in 4-6-2004.I didn't notice it was a thread revival. Guess I should have said "belated" congrats. ;)