It's 8:15 a.m. when John Ouellette walks across the street to grab a ladder and some tools from his van. He's greeted by a woman who passes by with her dog: a tiny Shih Tzu named Sassy.
 
Ouellette, 37, slides on a hardhat and rests the ladder against a telephone pole across the street from 26 Norma Drive in Nashua.
 
This is his first job of the day, and Ouellette is about to discover it's going to take a little longer than planned.
 
"It looks like the drop is no good," Ouellette said moments later, sneakers perched on one of the top rungs. He was referring to the wire that brings a cable, telephone and Internet connection into a house.
 
Similar scenes have played out for years on one Nashua street or another. The cable guy comes, installs a new service or fixes a problem, and is back on his way. But from the technician's perspective, it's hardly business as usual in the telecommunications industry these days.
 
As the digital age continues to transform nearly every occupation, many technicians are connected to the "office" only virtually. For Comcast, that change happened within the last six months or so.
 
Ouellette, a two-year employee of Comcast, keeps his truck at home and drives straight to the first job every morning. His work orders come through the handheld computer, as does most of his communication with the office.
 
Some telecom workers, including Ouellette, love the independence this work arrangement provides. But according to Rand Wilson, communications coordinator for the two unions that represent most telecom workers in New England, others say it's just the latest attempt to squeeze even more productivity out of employees already under tremendous pressure.
 
It's also one of the reasons Comcast workers across New England are mounting an effort to unionize, Wilson said.
 
FairPoint Communications, the telecom company that replaced Verizon in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont this year, has also ditched paper work orders, according to spokeswoman Jill Wurm.
 
However, not all FairPoint technicians report directly to the job site each day. Some managers still have their employees start their day at the garage before traveling to a work site, Wurm said.
 
Unlike Comcast, FairPoint employees have strong union ties. Rand said telecom workers are facing more pressure than ever right now due to something known as "convergence." Companies that used to specialize in only one service now offer three or more. The cable company offers telephone and Internet service. The telephone company provides television and Internet.
 
"They're all in deep competition with one another," Wilson said. "They're trying to squeeze more out of each worker."
 
And many employees like Ouellette are trained to install and repair all three services – not just one.
 
For customers, there are definite benefits to a more versatile, mobile technician. The time a company saves by sending employees directly to a job site means faster response times for "trouble" calls.
 
It means better estimates of when a technician will show up at your door and shorter service calls. The same handheld computer that delivers work orders can be used to test every device in the home.
 
And it means only one technician has to show up at your house to install or fix multiple services.
 
Ouellette's 8 a.m. job was an installation of all three services – cable, Internet and telephone – for a family that just moved to Nashua from California. As Ouellette spent the morning working inside and outside of the house, the family worked on tasks like ironing curtains for the bare windows.
 
But for the technician, it can mean one job after another without much time in between. As soon as a worker signs off a work order for one job site via handheld computer, they can be dispatched to the next.
 
Rand says the pressures on technicians have become so great that the movement among some Comcast employees to unionize picked up a lot of steam this past spring.
 
"As we speak, there's quite a movement to join," Rand said.