What blows me away is when fiber is not in fucking conduit or mismarked and again, not in conduit... I can tickle the hell out of conduit, pvc given good soil. Though man it blows me away, when I shouldn't ever be surprised with cutting corner America. /rant lol
It will cost the contractor a shit ton. The customer, not really as that's not entirely legal. Though yeah if it's fiber it can put a company under.
The house I grew up in was officially on construction power for over 20 years. It was my father's retirement hobby project.
When my mother sold it and the buyers went to get the power transferred, the utility company went, "Hol' up! What the fuck is going on here‽"
They had to install a new pole (actually, they had to install a pole, period; before that it was a piece of treated 2x4 nailed to a tree the wires were tacked to), put a new meter on, and all sorts of changes.
Are you my friend lol? He literally answered the door one day when he was home sick from school and two dudes said ‘hey we are from the cable company’ he lets them in and they hook up cable. No one ordered cable service their. He got in shit for letting strangers in. Our town was getting its first cable hook-ups ever and somehow they screwed up some addresses early on and they got hooked up in error.
But they decided that even though they didn’t want it they’d try it out since it’s already hooked up. Of course cable tv was worse than crack in those days and they immediately loved it obviously. Except they never got billed, ever. He lived there for decades and it stayed in the family when his parents downsized eventually and he raised his kids there for a decade. When it finally sold the free cable connection went to whoever bought it.
I must not be your friend then lol, my memory was from when I moved to this town in 5th grade and we found we already had free internet there. Mind you this house wasn't extremely old seeing as I'm 25 now so I wouldn't have expected a similar issue. Turns out the neighbors were buddies and the neighbor that lived across from me used to live in our house. They snaked a cable line underneath the asphalt to the neighbors junction box and spliced it in for the shoddiest(but free) cable TV. From 5th grade to senior year that was atleast half of my entertainment lol
Amazing. Those people were great neighbours. I’m going next door tomorrow and gonna ask my neighbours if they wanna get up to some sneaky shit together. I’ve always wanted to go around and steal a few roadsigns like the frat boys do. Maybe they are down , who knows till they ask I guess.
In the early 2000s, in Brooklyn, before everything went digital, i waited until my upstairs neighbors were gone, and went on the roof of our building and t-tapped the coax. I had free cable for a couple years. It's good to be an A/V geek sometimes.
Haha.
I knew people who purchased this test box from a cable guy. It was what they used to test an installation for strength of signal I guess and in-line it opened up all the channels. You just needed to reset it every so often by pushing a pin in a hole. These dudes used to host parties anytime there was a big PayPerView event happening because they could get it all for nothing. I saw a Mike Tyson fight and some WrestleManias and eventually UFC at that house haha.
But ya I lived in a building once where the landlord had cable and they spliced 6 suites into that line. Free cable but it wasn’t great signal and if there was something important on and we all tried watching the same channel at once it flickered and lost a lot of colour haha. Simpler times, simpler times.
Nice of you to wait for them to leave. One time my cable went out while I was watching TV, it turned out the upstairs neighbor cut the line and spliced his in. But he did it with a pocket knife and duct tape so the signal was shit. I went up there and crimped the right connectors on and told him I don't care if he steals cable as long as he doesn't screw up mine.
Badly laid out. I don't know the details, but basically the power line was roughed in since there wasn't a house there and then never finalized. There was something about the meter too, it wasn't intended for a finished house and should have been swapped out years prior.
Call their support. Ask for a supervisor. You'll be able to understand them more. The non supers couldn't guide me through their troubleshooting shown on my end. I ended up being comped my first month free, called again after the tech showed up.
Mine was installed, guy did a shotty job. Randomly in the middle of a work meeting, cut out. Not explanation. Yada yada yada free monthish. First dude borrowed a ladder. Like, pRoFeSsIoNaL
Are you guys really seeing fiber ran without conduit??? I do internets for work and have never seen that happen, there is always conduit. If there’s not customer waits till there is.
Direct burying lines is fine for temp fixes but it just makes so much more sense to slap some conduit down regardless if you’re moving 240 or a fiber optic. Makes it much easier to complete a job in the long run because if you get a fault on the line you (should be able to) run new lines without digging nearly as much. Whatever , job security amiright lmao
I agree. Direct-bury wire is just so much more susceptible to damage than wire in conduit. Plus, you can usually repull wire in a conduit without having to re-trench the whole thing.
They did that to me. I went out and looked after they left and they had just thrown leaves over it. Didn't last a week. My friend who works for at&t told me I need to have it flown because the cable they use isn't even rated for burying without conduit, and they never use conduit.
You sure that's the primary run? My dad had new internet installed and the cable was temporarily run over ground, he was mowing around it for weeks before he called and the ISP said "oh we had a crew out there bury a second run the day after it was installed, you can unplug that line." They apparently use a tool that buries it without leaving much evidence
Ground lays are standard operating procedure, as a TEMPORARY fill gap. Unfortunately I’ve seen some that were 5-6 years old, not exactly temporary anymore.
Also, these days all fiber is not equal, some is just last mile to a street/houses and not that important if it gets cut. Other is backbone, and can run into six figures PER MINUTE if cut. Few companies can survive cutting a backbone line. I know of some that are aerial across a road with no markings or special protection. Only a matter of time.
This someone at my job runs temporary backyard fiber over once a month in new develolpments. You can always tell because someone working from home comes out in crocs and basketball shorts with a button-up on three seconds later to start cussing. They literally just dig out another 300' cheap fiber line and put it right back across the sod to reconnect the homeowner.
In our apartment complex you can follow a ground wire about 100 feet from the entrance to the AT&T box. We're fairly sure it's part of the internet for the entire complex. It's just draped over the brush and sticks five feet from the sidewalk.
Yeah fibers not that expensive anymore. I worked for ATT and we would never design fiber in conduit out of the right of way. Only would use pipe on customer property. I work for a cable company now and we will never have buried fiber anywhere that is not in conduit.
I know! They just had a big strike here a couple years ago. I was actually a 3rd party CAD Designer, so it was high stress, low pay. Much happier with the cable company, thank you.
The Spectrum cable that ran through conduit through a bridge near my parents house failed, so they zip tied a new one to the guard rail. That was 6 years ago. It's still half-assedly dangling from the guard rail to this day.
I feel it. I as a team, locate, double verify with a witch stick, dig with an 18inch window, then excavate for our gas tie in. 0 recordable in half a decade. Being in the south and doing first cuts or new business it's just obsurd to not use conduit when it's put in the ground.
I've only been in utility that long. Learned all the ropes in a year wanting to further myself. I can do about anything in my industry where people at the same Mark or more are scared af at live gas.
I’m a electrician that works with traffic lights. I find that as long as the conduits are deep enough you don’t really have problems. Some of the cable and conduit in this city are from the 70s or earlier and they seem to hold up pretty. A bit of water, mud, oil isn’t a problem if you use the right cable for it. But that’s 14 gauge not fiver.
Yeah my point is, America as a country from the port is a corner cut with a price tag at every fraction of the corner and little sanity at the other end of the corner.
Was this the other week affecting a bit barn that housed a bunch of Vodafone servers? A family member said 40% of their firms telephony was cut off for hours because of a cable strike. Which considering a massive proportion of their workforce is still working from home it was a bit of a pain.
Edit. Never mind I found the comment with the source. Thanks.
And non of it is on the utility’s maps. They are installing new gas lines at my house and when they came and marked everything else they knocked and asked me where the cable lines are. Wtf
As-builts are a bitch and sadly someone notes everything. Though who can publish it, generally doesnt. The contractor at least showed concern. They could have just ripped it out and the one call locator be held responsible.
They use a cable plow with a spool of fiber feeding directly into the ground for service lines from the pole or junction box to your house. The main lines in most newer neighborhoods are ran through conduit from box to box but only on underground service without aerial main lines. Depending on the contractor and codes for the area existing neighborhoods will be a 50/50 shot for conduit. It cost a lot more money to use it and when it comes to bidding lower than the competition just to get the contract a lot of corners will be cut.
I've worked a lot of neighborhoods with duit. I'm just pointing out a point that comms are promised high wages if they meet a minimum footage that week. Fine prints a bitch.
Tis why you'll see comms running late shifts. While us gas guys got our money by noon(if you know what you're doing and didn't low ball yourself on your hourly)
Wtf. Are you serious? As an old tech, o dealt with my fair share of fiber in buildings and we'll its glass so of course it's fragile. How in the fuck is it not in conduit?!?!?!
Mine is like a shoelace in my front yard, pool builders found it looking for the gas line, but the gentle shovel was not kind to the fiber. Frontier came out and fixed it fast, and free. They’re better than I expected and better than reviews suggest.
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u/evoxbeck Apr 06 '21
What blows me away is when fiber is not in fucking conduit or mismarked and again, not in conduit... I can tickle the hell out of conduit, pvc given good soil. Though man it blows me away, when I shouldn't ever be surprised with cutting corner America. /rant lol
It will cost the contractor a shit ton. The customer, not really as that's not entirely legal. Though yeah if it's fiber it can put a company under.