When I was 18 I worked in a call center for AT&T@Home broadband cable. This was 2000, when the business was in its infancy and there were often technical issues.
I worked the "supervisor" desk (i was not a supervisor, just a somewhat more knowledgable rep) so would take almost exclusively irate calls.
I tried to help everybody of course, but a few people stood out from time to time as having exceptionally bad service. Bury requests that were cancelled for months -- so you have to mow your lawn around a cable and it trips your kids and gets chewed by rodents. Techs that hang a "we missed you" card on your door and then run back to the truck without ever knocking. Installers napping. Installers looking at porn. Installers going through peoples things.
For those people, I gave them free service "for life".
Deep inside the GUI app that I believe was called ACSR was the service provisioning and in every market there were all the paid services and a fairly similar list of free services that were used when the equipment was just being installed and users were brought online to test it. So they had "1.0 MB Broadband" and "1.0 MB Broadband Pilot". By moving users from one to the other, their bills would just drop to $0.
I have no idea how long this benefit endured. You'd think at some point there would be an audit or migration that cleaned it up. But I hope not. Steve Roach in Memphis and the 1/2 dozen others: I hope your cable is still free.
My university was apparently grandfathered into that category (for their off-property students) when the local ISP company was bought by Comcast; the original provider had put the uni into their "Other" billing category as it was a special off-rate annually-negotiated contract, and when they unified the IT systems they got moved into that "billed 0" category in Comcast's backend.
Yep, sure enough, an automatic cleaning script came along and killed all those cost-0 connections, cutting many student residents off from the network for a few days. My understanding is that the meeting between the Comcast rep and the head of campus IT was an instance of legendary restraint on the part of our IT head (in that everyone left the room with all their limbs still attached).
(I'm sure it helped the uni's bargaining position a lot that we were in a metropolitan area; Verizon was champing at the bit to get those accounts).
File a complaint with the FCC. I have done this twice now with comcast and both times somebody from their "executive support" contacted me the next day. It seems that their "executive support" might be the only people in the company that actually can solve problems and the FCC complaint is the only way I know of to get in touch with them. Clearly a very effeciient system Comcast has over there. https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us
Yup, I had a similar situation where I bought a house, tech came out, no cable run to the house. Their executive support got everyone to actually do what they said they were going to do. They can be reached directly at [email protected].
Long version:
There was cable to the utility pole but it wasn't actually active or connected to anything.
Tech said he would escalate to his supervisor and his supervisor would escalate to the construction department and contact us.
We ordered AT&T while waiting to hear back. AT&T install went fine but the router was complete crap for an advanced/technical person, high latency, IPTV steals bandwidth when recording more than 1 HD channel, etc.
I got sick of waiting so I sent a polite email to [email protected] and included a google maps link of where the pedestal was and the utility pole.
I received a response the next day that they would fix it for me.
A couple days later we heard from the construction supervisor that they would be working on it with no charge to us.
A week later, a crew was out running a new line from the pedestal to the utility pole.
A few days later someone came and buried cable from the utility pole to the house.
We waited a few days to see if someone would contact us and they did and said we could proceed with installation.
A tech came and setup everything but the actual line never activated. So the tech filed a service outage ticket and left.
The next morning we had a signal and everything was working.
So ~2 weeks of no Internet, ~4 weeks of subpar AT&T U-Verse later, had a decent connection with no complaints.
I was also able to get ahold of "executive support," and received A+ customer service. All my issues were resolved and bill was discounted ongoing.
I spent a few hours putting together a single .pdf with all the evidence of comcast wrongdoing compiled together. It was 10+ pages of screenshots and explanations proving comcast fucked up and was charging me for it. I emailed Comcast explaining I was ready to forward to techcrunch if they didn't resolve the situation A.S.A.P.
Within two hours I had an email from a real person.
As someone in the comments section noted to the author - there are plenty of short haul, unlicensed spectrum, wireless bridges available today that are very affordable. Even if he went with something more long haul oriented he could easily clear well over 30 miles LoS at over 500Mbit (https://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/) in real-world expectations. I would put the money into building a tower on my property and find the closest fiber plant Comcast has for the HFC node that services the general area and make them give me a L3 drop to this bridge. Having done this working for a cable provider in the past, it's trivial and inexpensive (costing well under $10k for the expensive equipment, generally a 5 mile link can be done for under $2k).
Reliance on Comcast won't get you anywhere in most cases, but there are options for this guy other than selling his house.
"find the closest fiber plant Comcast has for the HFC node that services the general area and make them give me a L3 drop to this bridge"
You are massively underestimating the work involved here. Aside from the physical constraints of needing a POP installed for handoff to your random wireless bridge, what makes you think the author can "make them" do anything? And what makes you think that Comcast could effectively engineer a solution to support this one-off installation, when they can't even schedule a normal OSP drop?
Edit: rhetorical questions aside, I actually investigated this option for my parents' old home in the boonies. Comcast actively prohibits you from doing this, per their AUP (http://www.comcast.com/Corporate/Customers/Policies/HighSpee...): "Network and usage restrictions: ... sell the Service or otherwise make available to anyone outside the Premises the ability to use
the Service (for example, through WiFi or other methods of networking), in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, with the sole exception of your use of Comcast-provided WiFi service"
Long-haul LoS can be pretty much impossible in parts of the Pacific Northwest due to the geography and ecology (read: hills and trees). The short point-to-point option with a cooperative neighbor could definitely work.
>find the closest fiber plant Comcast has for the HFC node that services the general area and make them give me a L3 drop to this bridge.
How did you manage to convince them to do that? Where did you mount the radio? How did you power the radio? Every time I've needed something unconventional from the local cable company, if it isn't some pre-existing procedure, they won't do it.
The article didn't mention, but I wonder if CenturyLink would have been able to provide other services, such as a T1 or frame-relay connection, if they couldn't provide DSL. Might be costly, but maybe not so much if shared between neighbors in a similar predicament?
There aren't a ton of major differences between Verizon and Comcast as companies, but this one is sometimes (as indicated here) key:
Verizon still employs its own unionized workforce of service technicians for cable connections; Comcast outsources that to multiple competing front-line service contractors.
This isn't a system that can't ever work, but Comcast has not yet solved the problem of keeping communications channels clear and coordinated among different competing contractors who have no incentive to cross-communicate with each other (not only are they not rewarded for it, but the incentive system of free markets is actively structured so that if one contractor looks bad, others indirectly benefit). It leads to all sorts of little micro-aggressions; when I had Comcast hooked up at a previous residence, the contractor had to climb the ladder to the pole twice because the junction plugs that should easily wire my house to the main trunk were not only detached, but removed (likely by a previous contractor, because hey, free plugs). He had to go down and get new plugs and splice them in.
In contrast, everyone is on the "same team" at Verizon, structurally and legally. You leave the junction plugs there because the next guy who comes along and needs to connect the service again is your coworker.
It's a shame that none of that matters to this individual because of the way the service local monopolies are structured in the U.S. Living near a major metropolitan area, I'm lucky enough to have my choice of the two vendors around here.
> I'm lucky enough to have my choice of the two vendors
Enjoy it while you can. It probably won't last.
I don't think Verizon wants to be in the cable business anymore. I'm not sure why. But it's been many years since they stopped bringing FiOS to new areas.
I had excellent FiOS service from Verizon. Then they sold entire states, including mine, to Frontier. Comcast is 100x the company that Frontier is. Comcast is A+ compared to Frontier F-.
This reminds me quite a bit of my situation when we built our new house. Our local cable company is Mediacom, which serves smaller markets. They were extremely flaky about running cable just 2 blocks from an existing drop. Fortunately after extensive research, I discovered that our local telecom ordinance (which gives Mediacom exclusive rights in our city) requires them to run cable to new houses in a timely matter. After months of delays, once I threatened to file a formal complaint with the telecommunications commission, they ran a cable to our house within two weeks.
The problem is, it's fairly expensive to dig cable to a single house, and it's just not worth it for the cable company to dig. If we decide that broadband is a necessity, some sort of municipal broadband or government oversight is absolutely required to guarantee that each person has access, because the market sure won't.
I know a woman who works selling advert time for Comcast. She showed me what she described as a very special "just fix my problem and don't bullshit me about it" card that she had.
She told me she gets two of these cards a year to hand out when she's trying to sell someone advertising time but that client isn't buying because they're upset about some problem they have with their personal Comcast service. She gives them a card, Comcast then forces themselves to fix the problem, and she can make a sale.
So I asked her why Comcast doesn't treat all their customer's problems this way. She laughed.
Every Comcast employee gets these cards - I got them when I was working for one of their west coast development offices. You're supposed to give them to friends, family, co-workers, strangers, etc. if you hear about them having a problem with service.
I was always curious if they use them as a quality control step for their regular tech service, or just as a feel-good empowerment thing for the hoi polloi.
I had something similar happen to me when working in institutional purchasing, and Comcast responded to an RFI we put out.
For several months, I had been working unsuccessfully to get Comcast to fix my home connection which would drop several times a day. (Modem losing sync, down for 5-10 min usually.) A friend lived in the neighborhood, and we figured out something interesting was up when we saw each other drop from IRC at the same time.
So, Comcast comes in to discuss their RFI response, and I raised the question of plant monitoring and proactive maintenance. "If there was a problem which affected multiple customers, do you take measures to detect this?"
When they answered in the affirmative, I raised my issue and asked them to elaborate.
The problem was fixed the next day, turns out it was a failed weather seal on something nearby.
In a situation like this, the key is to get a contingency in the house purchase contract -- and have the work done before the closing.
We bought a house that didn't have cable or DSL in a somewhat rural area -- the sellers were using 3G, satellite Internet, and dialup (!). They assured us that the only reason they hadn't had cable installed was the high cost they'd been quoted for running cable on the property (understandable as the house is almost 1/4 mile back from the street), and the cable company concurred that they'd be able to do the work, "no problem," and quoted a fee that didn't seem all that bad in the end (we took it into account when negotiating the price of the house).
Nevertheless, we made the sellers agree to a contingency - cable co. would successfully complete the work (on our dime, of course) and hook us up before the closing, and the total amount wouldn't exceed what we had been quoted. If the contingency wasn't met, the sale would fall through and we'd get our deposit back.
That contingency clause relieved me of a lot of stress over the next few months. Everything turned out OK in the end, but it was touch-and-go for a while.
Cable co. accepted the order with no problem, did a survey I guess, called us and said they wouldn't be able to do it. They were persuaded (not sure how -- agent took care of it) to reconsider, but then came back with a quote that was at least five times higher than before. Cue lots of emails and phone calls. It was helpful having an agent who lived in the community. In the end a local contractor dug the trench for us at a very reasonable price, cable co. came down on their estimate, and the work actually was completed at just under the original quote. The dirt was literally being shoveled back over the trench on the day of the closing.
As I recall it was actually a few days later that the cable guy came to do the inside wiring and "flip the switch," so strictly speaking the contingency (cable installed and working) wasn't satisfied by the closing, but we assumed we'd be OK at that point, and there were in fact no further hitches. We moved in and have enjoyed a (mostly) reliable, fast connection ever since. But we would absolutely have walked away, even though it was our "dream house," had we not been able to get the cable pulled. The contingency clause gave us the assurance that we could do that with no penalty. And, had it turned out that the work could be done but only at 5x the price, we could potentially have used the clause to negotiate a concession from the seller to cover the costs.
In this instance, the buyer was 100% convinced that the property had the service of interest and was told it did by the local monopoly in charge of providing such service. There was no work to be done before the closing because Comcast won't hook up Internet to a property for someone who isn't the property owner or resident.
What you're describing would be a bit like taking out a contingency on the house actually having running water after you physically walked through the house and checked the taps and toilets, just on the off chance that the water is actually not coming from the local muni water source, but instead from an on-property aquifer that a previous owner had tapped and painstakingly routed into the house's internal plumbing, and immediately after closing the sale that aquifer runs dry.
Real people don't go to that level of contract detail.
> I think this was the most productive call I’ve had so far, because I finally got the clear picture of what’s going on. Somewhere in Comcast’s system, there’s a check box that says that I already have cable service to the house. Every time I call to ask about new service, someone looks at this checkbox and concludes that I don’t need construction. Whenever a ticket is opened in regards to construction, it’s closed automatically because the system believes it’s not necessary. So I am literally in a Catch-22
What I think I would try I that situation is to change the address. Pick a nonexistent address on the same street, and order service at that address. Change the numbers on the house to match and make sure they are prominent so any people dispatch there will find it.
I had a similar problem with one Comcast system insisting that autopay was active, and another system refusing to charge my card each month while the total due kept rising.
Situations like this are all I can think of when considering offloading more and more work to machines. I am all for automation, and maybe it is the lesser of two evils, but there is a certain human problem solving/reasoning element that desperately needs to be figured out.
I wonder if the writer is being too quick to dismiss satellite - it certainly has its limitations but it could be a useful addition to the mix of limited connectivity that DOES serve the house.
The Verizon hotspots may have a 30gb/month cap - so buy two. John Woo rules apply - use the first 'till it runs out, then switch to the second.
Try combining multiple sources of connectivity with a load-balancing router, or similar. These can be set to send certain types of traffic via more optimal routes, so you reserve scarce/expensive bandwidth for applications/destinations which need it, and send other traffic across cheaper, slower or uncapped routes, etc etc. Combine satellite, mobile (cellular) Internet, wireline DSL, community wifi, even dialup into the mix.
Look at wilder wifi options too - if there's no connectivity at the house, do you have line-of-sight to somewhere which is better connected? Point to point antennas, high gain receivers, etc. More and more options to throw into the pot.
Obviously, it's all a lot of trouble, and is bound to be expensive - but given that the author was already considering paying some or all of the substantial Comcast buildout fees, even the most complex of these alternatives is still likely to be cheaper - and if it means not having to sell the house you love, then that has to be worth a thought.
Contact the local municipality that Comcast gets it's cable license from and complain. The also hit the corporation commission, and other licensing agencies. Then sue them.
Basically, they have a monopoly on a service covering an area, and they're refusing service. That's utterly stupid.
"(2) Any franchise granted pursuant to this chapter shall be nonexclusive and shall not preclude the county from granting other or further franchises or permits or preclude the county from using any roads, rights-of-way, streets or other public properties or affect its jurisdiction over them or any part of them, or limit the full power of the county to make such changes, as the county shall deem necessary, including the dedication, establishment, maintenance and improvement of all new rights-of-way and thoroughfares and other public properties."
If he's 2,500 feet from the nearest equipment, he's probably living in a low-density area that's not worth anyone's while to serve.
This is a pretty awful situation. I feel bad for the author. I've had two similar incidents in the past, although not quite as bad.
Years ago I lived in an apartment block with 9 apartments in the front building and 9 in the rear. This was the dialup era and I wanted (and assumed I could get) a 2nd line so I didn't tie up my primary line all the time. Turns out the telco had only run 10 lines to the rear building for whatever reason and I guess someone was using the "spare" already.
Interestingly, this was in the deregulation era. The guy I spoke to felt bad and explained to me how now they couldn't by law provide more lines for free. In the spirit of "competition" they had to price it "fairly". Oh well. It was a rental and I moved a year later anyway.
The second time was in the DSL era (which is still the case in Australia). The ACCC (sorta like an FTC/FCC hybrid) had decided that ISPs were allowed to install their own DSLAMs in the telephone exchanges.
Well that worked well in some exchanges and not well in others. Some ran out of space for racks very quickly. There was no spare capacity for me there. However I did get put on a waiting list that resolved very quickly. Now this was in the very early days of ADSL where it was still pretty unusual. I've heard some horror stories about how it is now in some parts of the country.
Anyway...
There must be other people in their street/area who also aren't serviced by Comcast. Can't Comcast justify wiring up the street by adding a bunch of new customers?
Also, the author mentions reading the franchise agreement but doesn't say anything more about it. I assume that means Comcast isn't required to service his area or at least isn't required to provide 100% coverage?
And Comcast wants to merge with TWC? They can't manage their current network. Why on earth should we trust a combined entity will be any better?
Calling this an "accident" is entirely too kind to Comcast. They're happy to claim they'll serve almost anything within particular geographic areas, whether or not they can or will.
(He mentioned DSL providers, too, which are their own brand of fun.)
Once I was getting fed up with Comcast, so I called Verizon to see if they could give me DSL, how fast it would be, etc. Their response was basically that they had no idea, but they could put in an order and see what happened. They literally could not tell me whether or not they could provide the service at all.
I used to live in Kitsap county and this story is very familiar. We had a house not far from the bridge where there was no (and probably will never be) cell phone coverage by any provider, dsl also wasn't an option, and comcast was the only game in town. You were lucky to get an FM/AM radio signal. Some of the problem is that houses are built sporadically outside Poulsbo and Bremerton proper - there really aren't neighborhoods so much as somebody bought an acre in the woods and put a house on it.
But, this is certainly not isolated to Kitsap county or Comcast. Now I live in the other side of the state, in Walla Walla, and I assure you that Charter is just as bad, even when you pay for a business-class connection. It seems once you get outside Portland/Seattle, the population density isn't such that the cable providers (or other potential internet providers) are much interested in the infrastructure investment. For the big guys like Comcast, Charter, etc - HQ is far far away and has no idea of the local situation. The only option I've found is to become buddies with the local field guys (and there are only like 2 for the 4 county area over here...).
Frankly, while the isolation and quiet of the peninsula is nice, you are better off selling your house anyway unless you are willing to hold it for 20+ years and hope that King/Pierce/Snohomish are finally so full that people have no choice but to move to Kitsap county. House sales are horribly slow and values barely move.
I'm on Whidbey, and thankfully, the situation is totally different (at least on the south end). We've got a good local telecom company that provides pretty decent dsl and phone service. Best of all, they've got local tech support and their techs will go the extra mile to make sure everything is working.
I still really believe that the big cable companies would be so much better if their internal systems weren't so broken. The problem is that They bought up so many small companies and have never completely integrated their processes and data into their main system.
I had very similar experiences with Time Warner depending on who I talked I would get different results. It seemed like the main corporate office was not able to see notes that the local office entered and vice versa.
Absolutely never do online chat with Time Warner Cable and never call their national phone number. Only call your local office. I've had appointments scheduled through online chat that never showed up that the local office didn't know about. Also have had the local office successfully debug problems remotely on the phone that the main corporate number claimed they couldn't fix.
Couldn't you sue? Your home purchase was predicated on Comcast's word that they could service your new home. You require it for work. Now you've bought a home, have to sell it for a loss, all due to Comcast. I don't see why you can't stick them with the bill. Call a lawyer, have them talk to Comcast, and maybe they'll change their tune about extending their line to your home.
Comcast made an intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact, for the purpose of inducing someone to purchase service from them. That person relied upon that misrepresentation, and sustained loss of time and business revenue as a result, and possibly also capital loss on resale of the "unserviceable" house. Purchasing the house was a necessary precondition to buying Comcast service, and the blogger did not wish to buy a house without service. Comcast didn't confirm their misrepresentation until long after the damage was already done.
The blogger seems to have adequate grounds to file a civil fraud suit, wherein he might ask that he be made whole for the losses sustained as a result of the misrepresentation, or compel Comcast to act to make their false statements truthful. Basically, pay for the aggravation, or do whatever it takes to provide service to the house, at their own expense. I'm not a lawyer, but this guy should definitely go for a consultation with the ambulance-chasingest, billboard-advertisingest attorney in his county.
And then demand a jury trial. There is no way that any given 12 people from the jury pool could see the facts of the case, and not want to curbstomp Comcast into oblivion.
When I grew up the telephone company was still a state-run monopoly. To get telephone service connected you had to pay a nominal fee, independent of whether there was trenching and laying of cable involved, or if they just had to connect at the patch panel.
Today's unregulated quasi-monopolies are some progress. Can we get the government monopoly back? The thing is - it worked extremely well!
It was very reliable and simple in any case (talking about AT&T). Long distance phone calls were also about 50 cents/minute interstate (and even longer distance intrastate) in the early 1980s and for a long time you couldn't even attach your own gear to the phone lines in your house. You had to rent AT&T phones. Some of this is a function of the general technological advance between then and now of course but Ma Bell was certainly not a fast moving organization.
From a 1976 SNL skit: "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company." Government monopoly wasn't nirvana by a long shot.
Wouldn't the easiest way to verify cable internet service for a residence be to simply ask the current owner? They will know better than anyone else (including the ISP) whether their exact location can be serviced.
I'm a little shocked that the author would go through all this back and forth with a company with a reputation like Comcast, and never once ask the previous owner of the house.
If the previous owner chose not to order cable service, they would have no idea.
I have coax to and in my house. I've never ordered cable service so I have no idea if it works or is connected to anything. I have DSL service I'm happy with, and rabbit ears on my TV.
It's nice that cable companies claim they need rate increases, monopolies, subsidies and so on because of all the work they do putting up infrastructure to serve everyone, and then also charge the residents for putting up that same infrastructure.
This happened to me in December 2014. I bought a house in way upstate NY. I called Time Warner to verify they could get internet to the location before I bought the house!! They said yes. I packed up, moved across country to then find out that Time Warner "made a mistake" and no internet is available. Not even DSL.
So, I am now the proud owner of a CradlePoint LTE modem, upped my data through AT&T since they were having a promotion to 30gb a month. It's a change in my browsing habits but 30gb is more than enough for work stuff and at the end of the month if I have 10gb to spare I go after those videos I wanted to watch.
[+] [-] encoderer|11 years ago|reply
I worked the "supervisor" desk (i was not a supervisor, just a somewhat more knowledgable rep) so would take almost exclusively irate calls.
I tried to help everybody of course, but a few people stood out from time to time as having exceptionally bad service. Bury requests that were cancelled for months -- so you have to mow your lawn around a cable and it trips your kids and gets chewed by rodents. Techs that hang a "we missed you" card on your door and then run back to the truck without ever knocking. Installers napping. Installers looking at porn. Installers going through peoples things.
For those people, I gave them free service "for life".
Deep inside the GUI app that I believe was called ACSR was the service provisioning and in every market there were all the paid services and a fairly similar list of free services that were used when the equipment was just being installed and users were brought online to test it. So they had "1.0 MB Broadband" and "1.0 MB Broadband Pilot". By moving users from one to the other, their bills would just drop to $0.
I have no idea how long this benefit endured. You'd think at some point there would be an audit or migration that cleaned it up. But I hope not. Steve Roach in Memphis and the 1/2 dozen others: I hope your cable is still free.
[+] [-] fixermark|11 years ago|reply
Yep, sure enough, an automatic cleaning script came along and killed all those cost-0 connections, cutting many student residents off from the network for a few days. My understanding is that the meeting between the Comcast rep and the head of campus IT was an instance of legendary restraint on the part of our IT head (in that everyone left the room with all their limbs still attached).
(I'm sure it helped the uni's bargaining position a lot that we were in a metropolitan area; Verizon was champing at the bit to get those accounts).
[+] [-] nathantotten|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jolan|11 years ago|reply
Long version:
There was cable to the utility pole but it wasn't actually active or connected to anything.
Tech said he would escalate to his supervisor and his supervisor would escalate to the construction department and contact us.
We ordered AT&T while waiting to hear back. AT&T install went fine but the router was complete crap for an advanced/technical person, high latency, IPTV steals bandwidth when recording more than 1 HD channel, etc.
I got sick of waiting so I sent a polite email to [email protected] and included a google maps link of where the pedestal was and the utility pole.
I received a response the next day that they would fix it for me.
A couple days later we heard from the construction supervisor that they would be working on it with no charge to us.
A week later, a crew was out running a new line from the pedestal to the utility pole.
A few days later someone came and buried cable from the utility pole to the house.
We waited a few days to see if someone would contact us and they did and said we could proceed with installation.
A tech came and setup everything but the actual line never activated. So the tech filed a service outage ticket and left.
The next morning we had a signal and everything was working.
So ~2 weeks of no Internet, ~4 weeks of subpar AT&T U-Verse later, had a decent connection with no complaints.
[+] [-] chatmasta|11 years ago|reply
I spent a few hours putting together a single .pdf with all the evidence of comcast wrongdoing compiled together. It was 10+ pages of screenshots and explanations proving comcast fucked up and was charging me for it. I emailed Comcast explaining I was ready to forward to techcrunch if they didn't resolve the situation A.S.A.P.
Within two hours I had an email from a real person.
[+] [-] windexh8er|11 years ago|reply
Reliance on Comcast won't get you anywhere in most cases, but there are options for this guy other than selling his house.
[+] [-] willidiots|11 years ago|reply
You are massively underestimating the work involved here. Aside from the physical constraints of needing a POP installed for handoff to your random wireless bridge, what makes you think the author can "make them" do anything? And what makes you think that Comcast could effectively engineer a solution to support this one-off installation, when they can't even schedule a normal OSP drop?
Edit: rhetorical questions aside, I actually investigated this option for my parents' old home in the boonies. Comcast actively prohibits you from doing this, per their AUP (http://www.comcast.com/Corporate/Customers/Policies/HighSpee...): "Network and usage restrictions: ... sell the Service or otherwise make available to anyone outside the Premises the ability to use the Service (for example, through WiFi or other methods of networking), in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, with the sole exception of your use of Comcast-provided WiFi service"
[+] [-] rohansingh|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MertsA|11 years ago|reply
How did you manage to convince them to do that? Where did you mount the radio? How did you power the radio? Every time I've needed something unconventional from the local cable company, if it isn't some pre-existing procedure, they won't do it.
[+] [-] lsllc|11 years ago|reply
https://www.ubnt.com/airmax/nanostationm/
[+] [-] brassattax|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monort|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fixermark|11 years ago|reply
Verizon still employs its own unionized workforce of service technicians for cable connections; Comcast outsources that to multiple competing front-line service contractors.
This isn't a system that can't ever work, but Comcast has not yet solved the problem of keeping communications channels clear and coordinated among different competing contractors who have no incentive to cross-communicate with each other (not only are they not rewarded for it, but the incentive system of free markets is actively structured so that if one contractor looks bad, others indirectly benefit). It leads to all sorts of little micro-aggressions; when I had Comcast hooked up at a previous residence, the contractor had to climb the ladder to the pole twice because the junction plugs that should easily wire my house to the main trunk were not only detached, but removed (likely by a previous contractor, because hey, free plugs). He had to go down and get new plugs and splice them in.
In contrast, everyone is on the "same team" at Verizon, structurally and legally. You leave the junction plugs there because the next guy who comes along and needs to connect the service again is your coworker.
It's a shame that none of that matters to this individual because of the way the service local monopolies are structured in the U.S. Living near a major metropolitan area, I'm lucky enough to have my choice of the two vendors around here.
[+] [-] true_religion|11 years ago|reply
One as you said are in-house and unionized, these guys seem to mostly handle the apartment complexes and large installments.
The other group handles regular houses, or off-one jobs when the market is exploding.
I've spoken to techs on both sides, and they both confirmed with mild disdain the existence of the other group.
Just an anecdote.
[+] [-] PhantomGremlin|11 years ago|reply
Enjoy it while you can. It probably won't last.
I don't think Verizon wants to be in the cable business anymore. I'm not sure why. But it's been many years since they stopped bringing FiOS to new areas.
I had excellent FiOS service from Verizon. Then they sold entire states, including mine, to Frontier. Comcast is 100x the company that Frontier is. Comcast is A+ compared to Frontier F-.
[+] [-] ZitchDog|11 years ago|reply
The problem is, it's fairly expensive to dig cable to a single house, and it's just not worth it for the cable company to dig. If we decide that broadband is a necessity, some sort of municipal broadband or government oversight is absolutely required to guarantee that each person has access, because the market sure won't.
[+] [-] pivo|11 years ago|reply
She told me she gets two of these cards a year to hand out when she's trying to sell someone advertising time but that client isn't buying because they're upset about some problem they have with their personal Comcast service. She gives them a card, Comcast then forces themselves to fix the problem, and she can make a sale.
So I asked her why Comcast doesn't treat all their customer's problems this way. She laughed.
[+] [-] web007|11 years ago|reply
I was always curious if they use them as a quality control step for their regular tech service, or just as a feel-good empowerment thing for the hoi polloi.
[+] [-] towelrod|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oasisbob|11 years ago|reply
For several months, I had been working unsuccessfully to get Comcast to fix my home connection which would drop several times a day. (Modem losing sync, down for 5-10 min usually.) A friend lived in the neighborhood, and we figured out something interesting was up when we saw each other drop from IRC at the same time.
So, Comcast comes in to discuss their RFI response, and I raised the question of plant monitoring and proactive maintenance. "If there was a problem which affected multiple customers, do you take measures to detect this?"
When they answered in the affirmative, I raised my issue and asked them to elaborate.
The problem was fixed the next day, turns out it was a failed weather seal on something nearby.
[+] [-] kiscica|11 years ago|reply
We bought a house that didn't have cable or DSL in a somewhat rural area -- the sellers were using 3G, satellite Internet, and dialup (!). They assured us that the only reason they hadn't had cable installed was the high cost they'd been quoted for running cable on the property (understandable as the house is almost 1/4 mile back from the street), and the cable company concurred that they'd be able to do the work, "no problem," and quoted a fee that didn't seem all that bad in the end (we took it into account when negotiating the price of the house).
Nevertheless, we made the sellers agree to a contingency - cable co. would successfully complete the work (on our dime, of course) and hook us up before the closing, and the total amount wouldn't exceed what we had been quoted. If the contingency wasn't met, the sale would fall through and we'd get our deposit back.
That contingency clause relieved me of a lot of stress over the next few months. Everything turned out OK in the end, but it was touch-and-go for a while.
Cable co. accepted the order with no problem, did a survey I guess, called us and said they wouldn't be able to do it. They were persuaded (not sure how -- agent took care of it) to reconsider, but then came back with a quote that was at least five times higher than before. Cue lots of emails and phone calls. It was helpful having an agent who lived in the community. In the end a local contractor dug the trench for us at a very reasonable price, cable co. came down on their estimate, and the work actually was completed at just under the original quote. The dirt was literally being shoveled back over the trench on the day of the closing.
As I recall it was actually a few days later that the cable guy came to do the inside wiring and "flip the switch," so strictly speaking the contingency (cable installed and working) wasn't satisfied by the closing, but we assumed we'd be OK at that point, and there were in fact no further hitches. We moved in and have enjoyed a (mostly) reliable, fast connection ever since. But we would absolutely have walked away, even though it was our "dream house," had we not been able to get the cable pulled. The contingency clause gave us the assurance that we could do that with no penalty. And, had it turned out that the work could be done but only at 5x the price, we could potentially have used the clause to negotiate a concession from the seller to cover the costs.
[+] [-] fixermark|11 years ago|reply
In this instance, the buyer was 100% convinced that the property had the service of interest and was told it did by the local monopoly in charge of providing such service. There was no work to be done before the closing because Comcast won't hook up Internet to a property for someone who isn't the property owner or resident.
What you're describing would be a bit like taking out a contingency on the house actually having running water after you physically walked through the house and checked the taps and toilets, just on the off chance that the water is actually not coming from the local muni water source, but instead from an on-property aquifer that a previous owner had tapped and painstakingly routed into the house's internal plumbing, and immediately after closing the sale that aquifer runs dry.
Real people don't go to that level of contract detail.
[+] [-] rayiner|11 years ago|reply
This is what Kafkaesque actually means.
[+] [-] tzs|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nitrogen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slayed0|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesbrownuhh|11 years ago|reply
The Verizon hotspots may have a 30gb/month cap - so buy two. John Woo rules apply - use the first 'till it runs out, then switch to the second.
Try combining multiple sources of connectivity with a load-balancing router, or similar. These can be set to send certain types of traffic via more optimal routes, so you reserve scarce/expensive bandwidth for applications/destinations which need it, and send other traffic across cheaper, slower or uncapped routes, etc etc. Combine satellite, mobile (cellular) Internet, wireline DSL, community wifi, even dialup into the mix.
Look at wilder wifi options too - if there's no connectivity at the house, do you have line-of-sight to somewhere which is better connected? Point to point antennas, high gain receivers, etc. More and more options to throw into the pot.
Obviously, it's all a lot of trouble, and is bound to be expensive - but given that the author was already considering paying some or all of the substantial Comcast buildout fees, even the most complex of these alternatives is still likely to be cheaper - and if it means not having to sell the house you love, then that has to be worth a thought.
[+] [-] beauzero|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zdw|11 years ago|reply
Basically, they have a monopoly on a service covering an area, and they're refusing service. That's utterly stupid.
[+] [-] rayiner|11 years ago|reply
They don't: http://www.codepublishing.com/wa/kitsapcounty/html/Kitsap14/....
See: 14.32.010 Terms of franchise.
"(2) Any franchise granted pursuant to this chapter shall be nonexclusive and shall not preclude the county from granting other or further franchises or permits or preclude the county from using any roads, rights-of-way, streets or other public properties or affect its jurisdiction over them or any part of them, or limit the full power of the county to make such changes, as the county shall deem necessary, including the dedication, establishment, maintenance and improvement of all new rights-of-way and thoroughfares and other public properties."
If he's 2,500 feet from the nearest equipment, he's probably living in a low-density area that's not worth anyone's while to serve.
[+] [-] cletus|11 years ago|reply
Years ago I lived in an apartment block with 9 apartments in the front building and 9 in the rear. This was the dialup era and I wanted (and assumed I could get) a 2nd line so I didn't tie up my primary line all the time. Turns out the telco had only run 10 lines to the rear building for whatever reason and I guess someone was using the "spare" already.
Interestingly, this was in the deregulation era. The guy I spoke to felt bad and explained to me how now they couldn't by law provide more lines for free. In the spirit of "competition" they had to price it "fairly". Oh well. It was a rental and I moved a year later anyway.
The second time was in the DSL era (which is still the case in Australia). The ACCC (sorta like an FTC/FCC hybrid) had decided that ISPs were allowed to install their own DSLAMs in the telephone exchanges.
Well that worked well in some exchanges and not well in others. Some ran out of space for racks very quickly. There was no spare capacity for me there. However I did get put on a waiting list that resolved very quickly. Now this was in the very early days of ADSL where it was still pretty unusual. I've heard some horror stories about how it is now in some parts of the country.
Anyway...
There must be other people in their street/area who also aren't serviced by Comcast. Can't Comcast justify wiring up the street by adding a bunch of new customers?
Also, the author mentions reading the franchise agreement but doesn't say anything more about it. I assume that means Comcast isn't required to service his area or at least isn't required to provide 100% coverage?
And Comcast wants to merge with TWC? They can't manage their current network. Why on earth should we trust a combined entity will be any better?
[+] [-] eropple|11 years ago|reply
(He mentioned DSL providers, too, which are their own brand of fun.)
[+] [-] mikeash|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] poulsbohemian|11 years ago|reply
But, this is certainly not isolated to Kitsap county or Comcast. Now I live in the other side of the state, in Walla Walla, and I assure you that Charter is just as bad, even when you pay for a business-class connection. It seems once you get outside Portland/Seattle, the population density isn't such that the cable providers (or other potential internet providers) are much interested in the infrastructure investment. For the big guys like Comcast, Charter, etc - HQ is far far away and has no idea of the local situation. The only option I've found is to become buddies with the local field guys (and there are only like 2 for the 4 county area over here...).
Frankly, while the isolation and quiet of the peninsula is nice, you are better off selling your house anyway unless you are willing to hold it for 20+ years and hope that King/Pierce/Snohomish are finally so full that people have no choice but to move to Kitsap county. House sales are horribly slow and values barely move.
[+] [-] wiredfool|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jgrowl|11 years ago|reply
I had very similar experiences with Time Warner depending on who I talked I would get different results. It seemed like the main corporate office was not able to see notes that the local office entered and vice versa.
[+] [-] ericras|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drcube|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] logfromblammo|11 years ago|reply
The blogger seems to have adequate grounds to file a civil fraud suit, wherein he might ask that he be made whole for the losses sustained as a result of the misrepresentation, or compel Comcast to act to make their false statements truthful. Basically, pay for the aggravation, or do whatever it takes to provide service to the house, at their own expense. I'm not a lawyer, but this guy should definitely go for a consultation with the ambulance-chasingest, billboard-advertisingest attorney in his county.
And then demand a jury trial. There is no way that any given 12 people from the jury pool could see the facts of the case, and not want to curbstomp Comcast into oblivion.
[+] [-] Filligree|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yummybear|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teh_klev|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HarryHirsch|11 years ago|reply
Today's unregulated quasi-monopolies are some progress. Can we get the government monopoly back? The thing is - it worked extremely well!
[+] [-] ghaff|11 years ago|reply
From a 1976 SNL skit: "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company." Government monopoly wasn't nirvana by a long shot.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dublinben|11 years ago|reply
I'm a little shocked that the author would go through all this back and forth with a company with a reputation like Comcast, and never once ask the previous owner of the house.
[+] [-] snowwrestler|11 years ago|reply
I have coax to and in my house. I've never ordered cable service so I have no idea if it works or is connected to anything. I have DSL service I'm happy with, and rabbit ears on my TV.
[+] [-] jellicle|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jason_slack|11 years ago|reply
So, I am now the proud owner of a CradlePoint LTE modem, upped my data through AT&T since they were having a promotion to 30gb a month. It's a change in my browsing habits but 30gb is more than enough for work stuff and at the end of the month if I have 10gb to spare I go after those videos I wanted to watch.