[BC] STL transmitters

[Broadcast List USER]

It's always been hard to order and get a properly performing broadcast  
loop, especially stereo conditioned pairs.

As long as they are in the Tariff, you can order them, and if they  
give you a hard time, complain to the SEC or whatever state agency  
regulates utilities.  After you have done this a few times, the phone  
company will "red flag" you, and your accounts.

As an aside, I made several complaints against the phone company over  
two stereo conditioned 15 kHz circuits that never made spec.  I moved  
from DC to (at the time) rural Virginia.  I had two phone lines in the  
new house.  The phone lines were on a stick in my back yard, waiting  
for the other houses to be built, so they could be spliced and  
encapsulated.  One line went bad.  The other was incredibly noisy.  I  
called the phone company.  I explained that my pager didn't work well  
"out here" and that I was on-call, taking a week off to set up our new  
house.

I was told it would be five days to get someone out.  I pressed, then  
they looked me up.  The attitude immediately changed.  A repair guy  
showed up in about a half hour.  It was raining like a bear, and he  
was drying out the splices in the air, and slipped into the pit in my  
back yard.  It was about five feet deep, so he was covered in mud from  
head to toes, totally soaked.

He got my attention by yelling from the front yard.  He didn't want to  
step on my front porch to ring the doorbell as he was dripping mud.

In short, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.  If the phone company  
isn't giving you what you want, COMPLAIN!

You cannot make them provide you with DSL or FiOS, but you can make  
them give you a broadcast loop or a T-1.

I have to admit, as long as you can get a T-1 there isn't much point  
in broadcast loops.  You can get good quality stereo audio, and even  
have room for your remote control with no compression on the audio  
loops.  You can even cram a few extensions on your PBX, so you can  
have extensions at the transmitter.  Man, I LOVED that when I had it.   
Someone dialed my office and I got the call anyway -- cool, and useful.

They are a utility, use the tools to make them do what they must.  Be  
a pain, you will get even better service.

--chip

On Feb 1, 2010, at 9:00 AM, broadcast-request at radiolists.net wrote:

> Message: 17
> From: <steve at theengineeringbureau.com>
>
> Have you tried to order a broadcast loop recently?  Between a  
> numbskull
> owner that didn't know how to order the thing and the equally spaced- 
> out CSR
> with AT&T and a technical guy in charge that didn't understand what  
> the
> station really wanted/needed and a mis-engineered line, I thought we  
> were
> lucky to get anything between the studio and transmitter in Reno.   
> The only
> guy that had a clue was the transmitter-end installer who managed to  
> get the
> right people to reengineer the loop twice.  This was in Reno.
>
> Did I mention that it was two or three weeks late?
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From: Broadcast List USER
>
> Have you actually looked at a T-1?
>
> Very often they are very inexpensive in the same rate center.
>
> If not, consider two dry pairs, and treat them as a T-1.  It may be
> possible to condition them yourself and make them work.
>
> Better yet, get dry pairs, and condition them yourself and use them as
> broadcast loops.  This isn't hard for fairly short hops.
>
> OH, and maybe the phone company will provide you with broadcast
> loops.  Maybe not, today.
>
> --chip