Hi Telecom Gurus!
Forgive my asking what appears to be a somewhat frequently asked question, but I need some direction in choosing a test set (Butt-Set) for work, and all the previous info I've found hasn't helped. To give you an idea of what I do, I'm a telco administrator (HAHA, that's the title, I'm really a telco trainee at the moment) for my company, which makes open die steel forgings. So, first off I'm not working for any kind of telecommunications company. However, we do do a lot (virtually all) of our in house wiring and troubleshooting ourselves.
So far, in my time in this position, I've worked on loop and ground start COs, T1s (PRIs), as well as our phone system, which is ISDN to each desk phone (a TDM PBX). Seemingly here in Verizon land, our ground start COs are always having some kind of an issue ... I swear cross with battery is haunting my dreams.
My question is this, what kind of a test set should I get in order to reasonably perform all the testing I need. I'm sure a basic, entry level set like the TS19 from Harris would do what I need, but where I get confused is all of the data protection and data lockout features that the more advanced sets offer (everything from the TS20's to the TS44DLX). Are these features something I could really use, or perhapse are they not enough? Or are they for a telco technician who will be using it all the time, and coul= d potentially tie into some serious voltage on a lie that would make T1s look like child's play? What have you run into in your jobs that have turned out indispensable, or something you wish you'd gotten originally?
Any direction would be much appreciate, and thanks for your time!
Best Regards,
-Jason Brault