Yeah, considering I was in the Switchroom till they completed a big push to get rid of the last Strowger Steppers with GTD-5 digital switches, then I was in Splicing till they completed a big push to get all the smaller aerial lead & paper cables changed to filled PIC - especially the unpressurized lead/paper property-line leads that were
50+ years old and always a Ton O Fun when it rained... Then I was not very ceremoniously shown the door.There's still a lot of air-core cable out there, but it's all underground trunk cables where they can control it. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" still applies. Mostly Stalpeth jacket PIC cable now, but there'll probably be some lead sheath paper or pulp insulated out there for another 50 years or till it starts going bad.
And with single-wrap paper "firecracker cable" you want to disturb it as little as possible, and just write off the bad pairs. (Just like it sounds, they wind a strip of paper around the wire, then they twist two wires into a pair. No glue - the paper will readily unwind if disturbed...)
Not worth the hassle to go into a case to fix 2 or 3 shorts out of
3600 pairs, you might find and fix one but create 2 or 3 new ones from moving things around...-->--