Dan Ashton has been employed by Centurylink (Illinois Bell, Mountain Bell, US West,  Qwest) for 35 years, and is currently a Senior Operations  Engineer assigned to the Critical Infrastructure Tech Support team. He continues to work on inductive coordination and electrical protection (ICEP) issues.

Dan started with Illinois Bell in 1977 as an installation and repair technician and transferred to Mountain Bell in 1979.  After leaving the Bell System in 1983, Dan came back to work for US West in 1991 and spent seven years as a cable and digital loop carrier repairman responsible for all noise mitigation work and all repairs and maintenance work on DLC remote equipment including proper bonding and grounding and SPD maintenance.

Dan spent nine years as statewide (NM) technical support working on power influence/ noise mitigation, high voltage protection, grounding/ bonding, chronic DLC repairs, and chronic DS0, DS1, and DS3 repairs.  He also headed a multiyear field trial of Lightning Protection/AC Isolation technology in NM for remote electronic cabinet protection

In July 2009, Dan was promoted to Lead Technical Support Engineer responsible for high voltage protection, power influence and noise mitigation and ground/ bonding practices in four “Legacy Qwest” states.

Since Centurylinks purchase of Qwest, Dan has been involved with high voltage protection and noise mitigation throughout CenturyLinks territory.  Dan has also been part of several internal committees rewriting grounding & bonding, high voltage protection and noise mitigation practices for the combined company’s.  He has worked in the field extensively with technicians on noise mitigation, AC induction and lightning protection issues.  Dan manages CenturyLink’s Tech Pub 77321 for High Voltage Protection and Tech Pub 77355 for Grounding and Bonding which are published on the CenturyLink Tech Pub web site. Dan continues to write electrical protection Methods and Procedures and Job Aids for CenturyLink.

Dan is currently a member of the IEEE (PES) Wire-Line subcommittee, IEEE (PES) SPD committee, ATIS STEP-NEP committee (where he is committee chairman), NFPA 780 technical editing committees for grounding & bonding and personal protection and TIA TR-42 standards committee.