Next time your phone line requires repair or you require some additional work around your premises with data or phone cabling, here are a few reasons and questions you can ask your “chosen repair technician.”
We’ll leave it to you to choose whether you want a telephone line technician or an electrician, but it might make a big difference in the overall customer experience.
License & approval from ACMA required
The technician must have a current ACMA license before performing cabling work on your property, whether it be residential or commercial. Those licensed technicians will be able to perform cabling work on your property, regardless of its size. A technician may be required under Australian regulations to hold a particular endorsement under their ACMA license if you require work done that involves fiber optics or data cabling, just to name a few. The purpose of this is to ensure that they are sufficiently knowledgeable about regulations and have the required training on that particular technology.
To protect yourself in the case of warranty and quality of workmanship taken out, ask any electrician or telephone technician to show their ACMA license prior to performing any work.
Suppose you pay the technician and then discover you have recurring issues and you find they have performed work that isn’t licensed, giving you a bad overall experience after paying them. You would be wasting your time and confidence if you had to hire another technician to complete the job properly. A licensed technician could have done it correctly the first time, saving you time and confidence.
The ADSL & telephone technologies you need to know
People in the phone cabling industry understand that it isn’t rocket science, but it does require an element of ingenuity to repair. Most antenna installers near you will use reverse engineering to find and fix the issue. It is important not to take your repair or installation lightly, regardless of whether you choose an electrician or a telephone technician.
If you need help with your phone or internet, would you prefer a licensed telephone technician who specializes in telecommunications and data cabling and the technology used across these mediums every day, or would you prefer an electrician who mainly works on power systems, lighting, and replacing fans?
In order to give you a better understanding of where I’m going with this, I’ll list some technologies and connection types within the field of telecommunications. I’d like to also ask an electrician who repairs phone lines if he understands some of these terms, or if he has any comments. It is possible that you will be using a technology such as this and need some expert advice on how to use it.
Technologies related to:
Asterisk, Bonded DSL, Cloud phone systems, pair gain systems, E1, PRI, Ethernet, RFC2544, POTS, PSTN, Asterisk, Ethernet, RFC2544, POTS, SIP, VoIP, NTD (network termination device used within the NBN).
In other words, hiring a 24-hour electrician who advertises they are able to install or repair phone lines may not be able to fulfill your expectations as a customer.
You will be paying for the technician’s service after all, so you don’t want to hire someone who just finished replacing a household fan when you could have someone who is licensed who just finished repairing the slow ADSL speed of a customer and a telephone line fault for you. You can’t argue with that.
Making sure you have the right tools
A lot of different technologies are being used across telecommunications, so it’s not a surprise that you may be using a technology that’s just been released and is becoming increasingly commonplace in Australian households.
When you hire a technician, you should also ask yourself if he or she has all the necessary tools to complete your job. Will they be able to diagnose your ADSL connection with a laptop, or will they even be able to isolate the Internet problem with an ADSL tester? Your technician should have all the necessary tools, including krone tools and cable tracers, on hand for any phone or internet repair or installation you need.
Taking time off work and sitting around all day waiting for the technician to find out he or she is either not confident in what they are doing or don’t have the right tools for the job is the last thing I want after hiring someone. As a result of this, your time off has been wasted and you might have to hire another technician, and perhaps you should have hired a phone technician who works in the field of telecoms and technologies on a daily basis.
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