U.S. Cellular network switch engineer in Oklahoma City keeps calls connected
Worker watches for signal of problem
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BY DEBBIE BLOSSOM
Published: January 4, 2009
Tully Satterfield, a network switch engineer for U.S. Cellular, tests a T1 circuit at the switch facility near downtown Oklahoma City.photo by Jim Beckel, The Oklahoman
Tully Satterfield is not the tech-minded brains behind the workings of your increasingly multitasking cell phone.
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Maintaining concerns and cell equipment
It would be difficult, too, to find Satterfield, who along with another switch engineer, Doug Mikes, and a seven-person crew that maintains cell tower sites, spends his work days inside an unassuming, windowless room waiting and watching for any signal of a problem.
Switch engineers maintain the daily operations and equipment upkeep of a huge, climate-controlled room filled with cables and boxes of equipment that rout calls to destinations when they leave the 230 cell towers in the Oklahoma City service area.
"All calls are tied back to this room,” Satterfield said, including mobile to mobile, mobile to landline, text messages, and Internet voice mails.
"I’m responsible for preventative maintenance,” he said, such as software database backups and addressing customer concerns and issues that can’t be handled at customer support centers.
Switch engineers also conduct hardware and software upgrades, and install new hardware.
Satterfield began his telecommunications career installing phone systems in businesses for a local landline company and moved to another telecom company as a switch engineer. Learning the job particulars came mostly from vendor training through companies providing the equipment, he said.
He came to U.S. Cellular in 2006.
"I like the job because it takes a different type of person,” he said — someone who can adapt to a schedule that includes downtimes combined with immediate responses to equipment malfunctions and customer concerns. "We’re always kind of watching the alarms, and equipment does break when it runs 24/7.”
Flexible work during equipment upgrades
Once a year, all the equipment is upgraded, which takes about a month, Satterfield said, and which requires working outside the normal 8 to 5 work day.
"You have to have a really flexible schedule,” he said. "And you’ve got to like technology and how it works. It is constantly evolving.”
Related Topics:
Electronics, Science and Technology, Technology, Communications Products, Computer Technology, Software
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