On 12-08-20 04:25 PM, Leo Bicknell wrote:

In a message written on Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 04:12:22PM -0400, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

...

The story: A piece of underground cable went bad. The techs didn't pull new underground cable. They decided it was better to do it "arial" (if you can call 2 feet "arial"). They took apart the two pedestals on either side of the break and ran a new strand of RG6 (yes, the same stuff you use inside your home, not the outside-plant rated stuff) tied to trees with rope. Why is that cable still in place?

That's a hint, not really a question. :)

That cable definitely needs to be removed in the interest of... uhh... "community safety". Yeah, that's it. You're worried about the puppies and children hurting themselves. ;) (Double-mega-extra-bonus points if you convince your local city services to do it!) - Pete

On Aug 20, 2012, at 16:25 , Leo Bicknell <bicknell@ufp.org> wrote:

In a message written on Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 04:12:22PM -0400, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

...

The story: A piece of underground cable went bad. The techs didn't pull new underground cable. They decided it was better to do it "arial" (if you can call 2 feet "arial"). They took apart the two pedestals on either side of the break and ran a new strand of RG6 (yes, the same stuff you use inside your home, not the outside-plant rated stuff) tied to trees with rope.

Why is that cable still in place?

That's a hint, not really a question. :)

Because VZ LTE, while nice in general, is not good enough for Jezzibell to use all day for a week. :) -- TTFN, patrick

Whatever you do, no one let on that people can get issues like this fixed by posting to NANOG... this list will be flooded in a matter of hours... Davis Beeman -----Original Message----- From: Christoph Blecker [mailto:cblecker@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 20, 2012 14:27 To: Patrick W. Gilmore Cc: NANOG list Subject: Re: Comcast 1, Verizon 0 [was: Comcast vs. Verizon for repair methodologies] Always good to know that *somebody* is listening! Cheers, Christoph On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 2:22 PM, Patrick W. Gilmore <patrick@ianai.net> wrote:

Comcast has already contacted me to fix this up.

-- TTFN, patrick

On Aug 20, 2012, at 16:12 , Patrick W. Gilmore <patrick@ianai.net> wrote:

...

Given the recent VZ thread, I thought I'd show why my new house has crap Internet.

The story: A piece of underground cable went bad. The techs didn't pull new underground cable. They decided it was better to do it "arial" (if you can call 2 feet "arial"). They took apart the two pedestals on either side of the break and ran a new strand of RG6 (yes, the same stuff you use inside your home, not the outside-plant rated stuff) tied to trees with rope.

<http://ianai.smugmug.com/BostonPix/2012/Comcast-Atherton-Street>

These pedestals have looked like this for months apparently. I called the 800 # and complained, they rolled a truck. The guy didn't even come in my house, just gave me his supervisor's number and said that he's a home tech, the outside plant guys are the problem and he can't fix it. A second guy rolled up while we were chatting and told me he had a call around the block for the same thing. They've been taking complaints about this for months and are as tired of it as we are. I assured them I was more tired of it, given he was getting paid while I was paying, but I understood their situation.

Of course, since the other "broadband" option at my house is 1 Mbps Verizon DSL, I don't have much leverage. :(

-- TTFN, patrick

P.S. Worst part is AT&T sux there too, so I have a picocell - which runs over the Comcast cable mode....

Perhaps this time they can afford to run you some real, honest-to-god Helvetica cable rather than Arial cable as you noted below. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial#Criticism You're definitely a bigger geek than I am though for griping about the font they used for the writing on your drop cable. Just sayin. -r "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick@ianai.net> writes:

Comcast has already contacted me to fix this up.

-- TTFN, patrick

On Aug 20, 2012, at 16:12 , Patrick W. Gilmore <patrick@ianai.net> wrote:

...

Given the recent VZ thread, I thought I'd show why my new house has crap Internet.

The story: A piece of underground cable went bad. The techs didn't pull new underground cable. They decided it was better to do it "arial" (if you can call 2 feet "arial"). They took apart the two pedestals on either side of the break and ran a new strand of RG6 (yes, the same stuff you use inside your home, not the outside-plant rated stuff) tied to trees with rope.

<http://ianai.smugmug.com/BostonPix/2012/Comcast-Atherton-Street>

These pedestals have looked like this for months apparently. I called the 800 # and complained, they rolled a truck. The guy didn't even come in my house, just gave me his supervisor's number and said that he's a home tech, the outside plant guys are the problem and he can't fix it. A second guy rolled up while we were chatting and told me he had a call around the block for the same thing. They've been taking complaints about this for months and are as tired of it as we are. I assured them I was more tired of it, given he was getting paid while I was paying, but I understood their situation.

Of course, since the other "broadband" option at my house is 1 Mbps Verizon DSL, I don't have much leverage. :(

-- TTFN, patrick

P.S. Worst part is AT&T sux there too, so I have a picocell - which runs over the Comcast cable mode....

Oh to have choices... I'm still hanging on the end of a dedicated T1 and paying through the nose. I'm nearly convinced that the monthly income from my circuit has prevented Qwest, and now Century Link from building out DSL. Greg On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 4:43 PM, Randy Bush <randy@psg.com> wrote:

on bainbridge, i replaced centurystink dsl (756k/256k for $65/mo) with comcast (20m/4m for $50/mo). the installer was a knarly old dog, and damned competent. he cleaned up old cable on the pole and where it went underground to the house. he cleaned up the box and replaced in-house junctions. then he accidentally left 8m of coax to get from the in-wall cable outlet to my 'puter area, and rode off in his white van into the sunset.

now if i could get that kind of professionalism from twt in hawaii ...

randy

You're lucky. Verizon did a great job installing mine (ONT on the backboard I put in the basement for them, handoff on ethernet rather than MOCA, etc) but somehow never managed to get around to dispatching anyone to actually install the permanent fiber drop (despite multiple calls). Fast-forward four months. I'd narrowly avoided messing up the temporary fiber with the lawnmower (going so far as to put orange paint on the lawn myself), but no such luck when they harvested the corn next door. Yes, my fiber got cut by a combine. You can't make this stuff up. Second time around, they did in fact manage to get the fiber buried, where I wanted it even. Had to meet with the construction survey guy, who was more than happy to put the white paint where I wanted it. -r Thomas Nadeau <tnadeau@lucidvision.com> writes:

My VZ FioS install was similarly fantastic. Those guys have figured out that spending a little more time, effort and cable (cat6 in the case of VZ) goes a long, long way in keeping customers happy.

--Tom

On Aug 20, 2012:7:43 PM, at 7:43 PM, Randy Bush <randy@psg.com> wrote:

...

on bainbridge, i replaced centurystink dsl (756k/256k for $65/mo) with comcast (20m/4m for $50/mo). the installer was a knarly old dog, and damned competent. he cleaned up old cable on the pole and where it went underground to the house. he cleaned up the box and replaced in-house junctions. then he accidentally left 8m of coax to get from the in-wall cable outlet to my 'puter area, and rode off in his white van into the sunset.

now if i could get that kind of professionalism from twt in hawaii ...

randy

I can tell you that I certainly would not eat a penalty for their failure to identify a 3 month build-out delay. Steven Naslund -----Original Message----- From: Daniel Seagraves [mailto:dseagrav@humancapitaldev.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2012 10:23 AM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Comcast vs. Verizon for repair methodologies Comcast annoys me. I never have any problems with the people you get when you call in, or the tech support people, but their contractors STINK. At home the Comcast line boxes serving the apartments aren't even closed. They just sit open and fill up with rain until things crap out. The contractor eventually turns up when the packet loss hits 90% or so. We were out of service for weeks at a time. Even after I reported it Comcast corporate can't seem to get the contractor to give enough of a shit to close things up properly. It hasn't crapped out in awhile but we've had a drought. I'm sure it'll start acting up again once fall gets here. At the office we have a similar issue. They've been bombarding us with ads non-stop, even now, we get a new Comcast ad about twice a week. In mid-June we ordered a line as a backup for our other line and to replace the phone service because the budget is tight. They told us we'd have service by the end of the month. We arranged for the telco to drop Long Distance service on the lines at that time to keep the numbers live in case there was a delay in porting out. (Telco said they'd drop the service but then went ahead billed us for it anyway, but that's another story). Anyway, Comcast contractor shows up to do their pre-wire inspection and tells me they don't have service anywhere near here and it will take them a month to pull a wire here before they can start. So we wait more. Week before last the boss calls Comcast to ask where our line is. Turns out they've lost our LOA and need us to re-send it. We do. They schedule another tech and give us an install date a week later (end of last week). We wait for the tech, but he never shows. So we call Comcast to ask where the tech is. He closed the ticket without showing up, saying it would take them another 3 months to get service here. We haven't decided if we're going to wait more or just cancel the contract and eat whatever penalty is involved. I get the feeling they want us to cancel so they don't have to build out. I really can't see this ending well for us. On Aug 21, 2012, at 10:00 AM, "Robert E. Seastrom" <rs@seastrom.com> wrote:

You're lucky. Verizon did a great job installing mine (ONT on the backboard I put in the basement for them, handoff on ethernet rather than MOCA, etc) but somehow never managed to get around to dispatching anyone to actually install the permanent fiber drop (despite multiple calls).

Fast-forward four months. I'd narrowly avoided messing up the temporary fiber with the lawnmower (going so far as to put orange paint on the lawn myself), but no such luck when they harvested the corn next door.

Yes, my fiber got cut by a combine. You can't make this stuff up.

Second time around, they did in fact manage to get the fiber buried, where I wanted it even. Had to meet with the construction survey guy, who was more than happy to put the white paint where I wanted it.

-r

Thomas Nadeau <tnadeau@lucidvision.com> writes:

...

My VZ FioS install was similarly fantastic. Those guys have

...

--Tom

On Aug 20, 2012:7:43 PM, at 7:43 PM, Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>

wrote:

...

...

on bainbridge, i replaced centurystink dsl (756k/256k for $65/mo)

with

...

...

comcast (20m/4m for $50/mo). the installer was a knarly old dog, and damned competent. he cleaned up old cable on the pole and where it went underground to the house. he cleaned up the box and replaced in-house junctions. then he accidentally left 8m of coax to get from the in-wall cable outlet to my 'puter area, and rode off in his white van into

figured out that spending a little more time, effort and cable (cat6 in the case of VZ) goes a long, long way in keeping customers happy. the

...

...

sunset.

now if i could get that kind of professionalism from twt in hawaii ...

randy

At one of our schools it took 3+ years and 3 new orders to get the service. The contractor came and did crap work, drilled all kinds of holes on the outside of the building and incorrectly sealed them. The best part was that when the contractor finished, he did not notify Comcast. Another month passed before we submitted another order and got the service installed. I have places waiting for Comcast over 2 years. On the other hand, I have had another carrier come in and put in a circuit that included a miles worth of underground build out installed in less than 1 month. At this point I don't know who's internal politics are more complicated, ATT or Comcast. -Mario Eirea

-----Original Message----- From: Daniel Seagraves [mailto:dseagrav@humancapitaldev.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2012 11:23 AM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Comcast vs. Verizon for repair methodologies

Comcast annoys me. I never have any problems with the people you get when you call in, or the tech support people, but their contractors STINK.

At home the Comcast line boxes serving the apartments aren't even closed. They just sit open and fill up with rain until things crap out. The contractor eventually turns up when the packet loss hits 90% or so. We were out of service for weeks at a time. Even after I reported it Comcast corporate can't seem to get the contractor to give enough of a shit to close things up properly. It hasn't crapped out in awhile but we've had a drought. I'm sure it'll start acting up again once fall gets here.

At the office we have a similar issue. They've been bombarding us with ads non-stop, even now, we get a new Comcast ad about twice a week. In mid-June we ordered a line as a backup for our other line and to replace the phone service because the budget is tight. They told us we'd have service by the end of the month. We arranged for the telco to drop Long Distance service on the lines at that time to keep the numbers live in case there was a delay in porting out. (Telco said they'd drop the service but then went ahead billed us for it anyway, but that's another story). Anyway, Comcast contractor shows up to do their pre-wire inspection and tells me they don't have service anywhere near here and it will take them a month to pull a wire here before they can start. So we wait more. Week before last the boss calls Comcast to ask where our line is. Turns out they've lost our LOA and need us to re-send it. We do. They schedule another tech and give us an install date a week later (end of last week). We wait for the tech, but he never shows. So we call Comcast to ask where the tech is. He closed the ticket without showing up, saying it would take them another 3 months to get service here.

We haven't decided if we're going to wait more or just cancel the contract and eat whatever penalty is involved. I get the feeling they want us to cancel so they don't have to build out. I really can't see this ending well for us.

On Aug 21, 2012, at 10:00 AM, "Robert E. Seastrom" <rs@seastrom.com> wrote:

...

You're lucky. Verizon did a great job installing mine (ONT on the backboard I put in the basement for them, handoff on ethernet rather than MOCA, etc) but somehow never managed to get around to

...

anyone to actually install the permanent fiber drop (despite multiple calls).

Fast-forward four months. I'd narrowly avoided messing up the temporary fiber with the lawnmower (going so far as to put orange paint on the lawn myself), but no such luck when they harvested the corn next door.

Yes, my fiber got cut by a combine. You can't make this stuff up.

Second time around, they did in fact manage to get the fiber buried, where I wanted it even. Had to meet with the construction survey guy, who was more than happy to put the white paint where I wanted it.

-r

Thomas Nadeau <tnadeau@lucidvision.com> writes:

...

My VZ FioS install was similarly fantastic. Those guys have

dispatching figured out that spending a little more time, effort and cable (cat6 in the case of VZ) goes a long, long way in keeping customers happy.

...

...

--Tom

On Aug 20, 2012:7:43 PM, at 7:43 PM, Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>

wrote:

...

...

on bainbridge, i replaced centurystink dsl (756k/256k for $65/mo) with comcast (20m/4m for $50/mo). the installer was a knarly old dog, and damned competent. he cleaned up old cable on the pole and where it went underground to the house. he cleaned up the box and replaced in-house junctions. then he accidentally left 8m of coax to get from the in-wall cable outlet to my 'puter area, and rode

off

...

...

in his white van into the sunset.

now if i could get that kind of professionalism from twt in hawaii ...

randy

On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 11:25 AM, Eric Wieling <EWieling@nyigc.com> wrote:

This is an example of what is really wrong. The install tech usually does a good job (there are exceptions, of course), but then the outside plant people drop the ball.

I appreciate it when a repair or install tech does whatever is needed to get the service up and running. What I don't appreciate is when the outside plant people don't bury the cable or don't fix the pedestal or whatever other thing is needed to keep problems from happening again and again and again.

Eric, I'm not one to jump into a thread like this, but being that I've known a lot of excellent OSP personnel in my time, I have to say that not all OSP personnel are bad. They are asked to do remarkable things with the most horrific conditions, but yet they still show up to work. I do not believe the situations outlined in this thread are due to the actual OSP personnel, but rather than management and lack of personnel justification. As others have pointed out, knowingly or not, OSP does not directly generate revenue, so it's harder to justify personnel just to "maintain". Unfortunately more times than not it takes a natural disaster to get monies allocated to fixing the plant. And that's usually a hurry up and get them running again, so the little things are skipped. Also, not to diminish RS's experience but when prioritizing OSP activities, it usually involves projects that impact thousands of customers, if not tens of thousands of customers and unfortunately the single customer incidents are put on the back burner. Oh and on another note, I've seen "install techs" purposely blame OSP for work that they were intended to do just because they believe it's not part of their job description. Personally when conduit needs to be installed or put in place (for my own exclusive use), I'll suck it up and get it done so that when the install tech comes it's an easy install without issue nor finger pointing. I find that this usually ends up saving more monies from headaches / lack of work than the actual cost of the materials and "installation". charles

-----Original Message----- From: Robert E. Seastrom [mailto:rs@seastrom.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2012 11:01 AM To: Thomas Nadeau Cc: North American Network Operators' Group; Joe Greco Subject: Re: Comcast vs. Verizon for repair methodologies

You're lucky. Verizon did a great job installing mine (ONT on the backboard I put in the basement for them, handoff on ethernet rather than MOCA, etc) but somehow never managed to get around to dispatching anyone to actually install the permanent fiber drop (despite multiple calls).

Fast-forward four months. I'd narrowly avoided messing up the temporary fiber with the lawnmower (going so far as to put orange paint on the lawn myself), but no such luck when they harvested the corn next door.

Yes, my fiber got cut by a combine. You can't make this stuff up.

Second time around, they did in fact manage to get the fiber buried, where I wanted it even. Had to meet with the construction survey guy, who was more than happy to put the white paint where I wanted it.

-r

Thomas Nadeau <tnadeau@lucidvision.com> writes:

...

My VZ FioS install was similarly fantastic. Those guys have figured out that spending a little more time, effort and cable (cat6 in the case of VZ) goes a long, long way in keeping customers happy.

--Tom

On Aug 20, 2012:7:43 PM, at 7:43 PM, Randy Bush <randy@psg.com> wrote:

...

on bainbridge, i replaced centurystink dsl (756k/256k for $65/mo) with comcast (20m/4m for $50/mo). the installer was a knarly old dog, and damned competent. he cleaned up old cable on the pole and where it went underground to the house. he cleaned up the box and replaced in-house junctions. then he accidentally left 8m of coax to get from the in-wall cable outlet to my 'puter area, and rode off in his white van into the sunset.

now if i could get that kind of professionalism from twt in hawaii ...

randy