MSYoung

Very interesting reading these posts and I agree with quite a lot of what is said here. You guys coming from data and adding voice to your resume is great.

The biggest problem I have seen between voice and data techs is the us versus them attitude from both sides. I have always had to prove that I knew how to spell data when I came to a new customer and was adding VoIP capability to the phone system. That still exists but is slowly fading away, however I still encounter places where the voice guy does voice and the data guy does data. And neither one will let the other see what they do or make any attempt to learn the other job, they won't even get together for lunch. These guys will lose out in the end but you can't convince them of that.

I believe that voice patch panels came about because data guys were beginning to do voice and were completely lost at a punch block. Now that is not so much of a problem because most Avaya circuit boards are either 8 port or 24 port boards, but when it started you had 4 port, 8 port, 12 port, 16 port, and 24 port circuit packs. If you replaced a 4 port card with a 16 port card all further work was on hold until the patch panel was replaced.

Where I work all of the patch panels were installed in numerical sequence and the data guy plugs in patch cords for phones also but he still does not know how to count. If he has a problem he tells me that the phone in port 197 is dead.

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