Interview With A Network Operations Center Technician
A new month means another chance to meet an incredible member of the UTOPIA Fiber team! This month, we’re shining a spotlight on Sam Harper, one of our talented NOC technicians, to give you an inside look at his role and what it’s like working behind the scenes in our Network Operations Center (NOC).
What’s your name, and position, and how long have you been at UTOPIA Fiber?
I’m Sam Harper, I’ve been a NOC technician at UTOPIA Fiber for seven years.
What is the role of the NOC at UTOPIA Fiber?
It’s fairly traditional, but we do a few extra things. UTOPIA is not a corporate giant like some of our competitors, so, we do the usual primary job of observing and reporting. In addition, we spend a lot of time working hand in hand with engineering and a variety of other departments to maintain service uptime. It makes a big difference when all the hardware does what it needs to as we have commissioned it to do.
What do you do as a NOC Tech?
Day to day we take on a variety of problems. Everything from managing new installs, equipment upgrades, and replacements in cases where the equipment needs to handle unique configurations. We also help coordinate efforts with outside plant/field services/engineering to upgrade and replace equipment in our cabinets and huts as needed. That can involve things like our backup power management to our backup access units or out-of-band equipment.
What does a typical workday look like for you?
I start my day by looking into alerts and outages that may have happened during the night or are ongoing, these can be anything from equipment failure to power outages. I will look for items impacting anything from our business customers to equipment uplinks. I then investigate to see what’s needed and dispatch help whether it’s field services or to make a call to the ISP, to let them know that we’ve noticed the monitoring alerts. I will check on alerts periodically while working on order configurations from same-day, cancel, change, and suspend tasks, all while taking calls for troubleshooting, new installs, locate requests, TR requests, equipment upgrades/replacements etc. I can end up working through 30 to 60 tasks a day or more.
What made you want to go into network operations?
As I stepped into the IT world this came up as the first opportunity. I just enjoyed the environment from day one. The idea of communicating with the network hand in hand to maintain uptime and seeing it on an intimate level, as well as feeling part of the growth of something big.
What led you to work at UTOPIA Fiber?
I was working through my college courses when this came across my plate. I was strongly encouraged to apply and see what happens. With all the other options I was attempting to cultivate, UTOPIA called first before anybody else. So it began the journey of “Hey! let’s see how far this can go.”
What’s your favorite memory you’ve made working at UTOPIA Fiber?
Watching the customer base go from 22,000 to 70,000 in the last seven years. It’s been kind of neat to see that. It feels like I’m part of the growth of something awesome on the ground floor. I mean, others have seen it from the beginning, but for me, it’s been good to see it grow.
What do you think is the biggest obstacle you and your team face?
The growth. With UTOPIA being kind of smallish compared to other internet giants, we don’t have all the corporate funding that you would see something like Google or MSN getting. So we’re making it work with a unique set of boundaries. It becomes a bit of a strain when we handle more per day than we think we can. We do have automation on the way, but until then we handle it manually and it can be a lot of work. There are feelings of being overworked, and wearing the 2 to 3 hats, but we keep at it. Outages can be a stress, when equipment fails or squirrels are out in force in the summer. Some days it seems like construction fiber hits compete with the squirrels to see who can take more people down per week.
What do you wish people knew about UTOPIA Fiber?
That we aren’t taking over, we are inviting growth and we’re here for the people. Our ISPs have done a great job on the front end representing the UTOPIA name with their own. Emphasizing that it’s not about whose fault it is, or whose equipment failed, it’s just a matter of customer uptime. We are not concerned with what is wrong or where, just about resolving it in a timely manner. The enemy is the problem, not the customer. We work hard at not just passing off the issue or customer to ‘the next guy’.
What’s your favorite thing about working at UTOPIA Fiber?
It’s small. One of my favorite things is being able to reach out to different departments and have almost instantaneous open communication. Nothing’s shuffled into a memo for days or weeks on end or an email that never comes back around or gets missed. It’s stuff that can be addressed almost instantly, so there could be, a rapport with other departments.
Outside of work what is your favorite thing to do?
I like summer activities a lot. So, when I’m not here I can be found either kayaking, hiking, or even working on home remodeling projects. I’m very happy working hands-on. I spent the first half of my life building skill sets doing that but made a career change. So I like to be actively working on something.
If there was any other department at UTOPIA that you could work at, what department would it be?
I like the idea of, building on the career moving into engineering, but I could be happy almost anywhere at UTOPIA. If I could conceptualize the work in programing I could try for some places like the developer’s team, but that’s well above my skill set right now. Yeah, programming is not my thing, but places like field services could be a nice alternative. Even some management options are not too big I guess if I would never get into engineering.
That’s all for today’s interview! We hope you enjoyed learning more about Sam and what it’s like to be a part of our network operations team! We are so grateful to Sam and all of our network operations team for all of their hard work to ensure our network is up and running smoothly!