The Turf Wars Between Phone and Cable 172
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Time is carrying a story about squabbling between phone and cable companies, now that they're sharing the same 'turf.' While it may sound humorous, it's anything but for customers. Bad blood between the cable providers and the bells has resulted in shoddy work, slapdash repairs, rumours of sabotage, and (of course) higher costs." From the article: "In some cases, cable and phone companies accuse one another of ripping out equipment. In others, wires were reportedly left exposed and ungrounded. Elsewhere, Verizon asserts that dozens of times this year, Comcast and other cable providers ran their wires down phone company pipes instead of installing separate conduits. Verizon said that in one case it sent a letter to Comcast asking that the practice be stopped, but that the paperwork and repairs that followed not only cost hundreds of dollars, but delayed installations for its customers."
Same old same old. (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't wait for it to start between them and the telco providers. It will be so much "better". Competition is good. Competition without oversight and some rules to limit bad behaviour sucks. And this is all about getting rid of the oversight - let the market regulate itself my ass.
Re:Same old same old. (Score:5, Funny)
The market will regulate itself whether it likes it or not ! Whether it benefits the populace doesn't have anything to do with it. Didn't you learn anything during endoctrinati^Wschool ?
Re: (Score:2)
A great example is environmental regulation--there is little or no incentive on the part of corporations not to dump merc
Re:How much time have you got? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps you've heard of this little place: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon [wikipedia.org].
http://www.boeing.com/ids/a_to_z.html [boeing.com] looks like a lot of pork (IE government subsidies) to me.
I get your point, but don't think for a second that the US is not funding R&D for Boeing. And they are using money confiscated from me to remain the "world's policemen," even though most of the world didn't ask us in the first place.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There is a big difference between "has the best" and "is the best". True, the US has the best hospitals, surgeons etc. But only the wealthiest 10% of the population has access to them. For everyone else, all you get is care that would horrify the typical Swiss or German.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Whats wrong with being a socalist? We have great healthcare, educaton and transportation system here and even gret unemployment benifits!"
Oh brother, are you serious?
What is wrong with socialism, is that it allows no respect for the individual. It assumes that we are all the same, that we can all function and achieve at the same rate, and in an effort to equalize the playing field, it is the achievers who suffer in favour of the under-achievers.
You think you have great healthcare? You must be daft. What you have is common availability of AVERAGE healthcare. The best healthcare in the world, like just about any other endeavour is right here in the United States of America. Why? Because self-interest is attached to our achievement. We don't work to glorify the state, we work to sustain and better ourselves. We have a stake in how good or bad our lives can be, so we take risks that socialist countries never imagine.
"What good is a phone call when you cannot call"(*)
Sure you have all the tech but most people is not able to access all of this health care. In fact if the for profit research teams were left alone we would have millions of dollars in research of cosmetic and the solution to erection problems while real diseases that kill lots and lots of people would have much less money invested. Oh wait...
You think your education is great? I couldn't tell that from your spelling, but whatever. Most nations strive to send their best and brightest to America for a college-level education. Where we DO have socialism (public schools, welfare) you also find our least productive people. The average American puts in more work hours per week than the workers of any other nation, and our poor people live better than 90% of people in other nations.
Strange, in Brazil we have the exact opposite happening. We have a lot of payed universities popping up that are in f
Re: (Score:2)
Bullshit. The cabling problem is NOTHING compared to the weight issues. Airbus caused potential customers to have to completely remodel their profit models for fuel consumption and passenger numbers due to weight issues. On top of that, since the A380 wing failed during initial stress tests, they had to beef up the structure adding even more weight. Ask someone as Airbus if they are really concerned about cabling, when that fat bird of
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If I called, they took it seriously and the problem was resolved about as quick as possible. It was a nice thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Same old same old. (Score:4, Informative)
Cox Cable ripped up the Verizon telephone cabling underneath my house when they converted the previous owner from Verizon telephone service (POTS) to Cox telephone service (Voice over HFC, not VoIP). This has forced me to use Cox telephone service, even though it is more expensive than Verizon (until I get a wiring contractor to visit).
What's even more frustrating is that I have FIOS (FTTC) ready at the curb from Verizon, but I can't convert over to that -- because Verizon won't (at any price) repair the telephone wiring underneath
my house.
When I do find a wiring contractor who doesn't think my re-wiring job is "too small", then I'm going to have both Cox's wiring and Verizon's wiring relocated inside my Garage, with my very own patch panel next to them. This way neither provider has any reason to go underneath the house and touch the wiring ever again. Instead, switching providers will just be a matter of switching which service is connected to my patch panel.
A word to the wise, if building a new house, having all the telephone/data/television wiring pulled back in a "home run" to a patch panel and have the various service provider demarc boxes installed next to that patch panel. This should be *inside* the house, so that the bored teenager down the street can't easily mess with your wiring. Although wireless Ethernet is quite popular today, it is still sensible to at least run Category-5 UTP wiring between the patch panel and (each bedroom, study, family room/den) so that you have options later on (e.g. if there are wireless coverage issues, which might happen later on even if it isn't a problem now).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, how the hell do they have that wired? Was Verizon's original wiring just haphazardly spliced off underneath the house from the line in from the street? If so, why didn't Cox just cut it and use your existing wiring on the far side of their digital -> POTS device? Why can't Verizon just cut your Cox off* and attach th
Re: (Score:2)
Coaxial cable is often used by cable companies when providing phone service.
This is far different then telephone lines provided by the telco's....as you are surely aware, coaxial cabling and phone lines aren't the same.
Re: (Score:2)
My phone line actually relays information on the way to my phone via the Motorola Surfboard SB5100 Cable Modem which only has an "in" outlet in coaxial format.
You asked why cable might be different and rather than accept that cable might be different simply want to explain once again how yours is. Not everyone has your set up or can utilize your setup.
Re: (Score:2)
We don't even get good broadband (Score:4, Insightful)
And this is all about getting rid of the oversight - let the market regulate itself my ass.
Let's face it. The FCC has made it easy for incumbents to keep new competitors out. So now we have incumbents fighting each other with dirty tricks, because they know consumers have no choices but the incumbents. Talk about a recipie for failure. Our broadband choices suck ass, and the providers take turns screwing customers.
Belief that an unregulated market will cure all evils is a belief that long-coddled Baby Bells and cable companies will suddenly embrace open, honest competition. They're like rich kids, born with silver spoons in their mouths, crying about equal opportunity. It's disgusting.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well there are actually regulations forbidding competition in many areas, like priority given to companies to lay cable.
Absolutely. That's what makes these claims about "unnecessary regulation" so pathetic. The cable and telecom companies want regulation when it suits their needs. For example, they've been fighting tooth and nail in courts against community broadband, arguing that municipalities shouldn't be allowed to compete against private enterprise. Also, cable operators have a built-in advantage
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
FCC, DOJ, and the worst is the State Utility Commissions. I've seen lata maps like this http://www.puc.state.oh.us/pucogis/statemap/lata_e
Recently PUCs have been afraid they were losing their power with more and more IP services being offered.
A suspicious eye *is* a good idea (Score:2)
The big companies are partially to blame - no big company deals with change very well - but the government isn't your friend either.
That's a clever bit of obfuscation. Baby Bells have been fighting PUCs for a long time because they want national regulation of telecom. They've been very effective in telling the FCC what to do. State and local regulators are less willing to let the ILECs do whatever they want because they are often stuck with crappy service and few options.
As for PUCs trying to regulate
I've seen such sabotage personally (Score:2)
I called them complaining, and about 30 minutes
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Same old same old. (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is all about getting rid of the oversight - let the market regulate itself my ass.
Let's say you wait too long to get to the gas station and you run out. So you walk up to the first car you see where the owner isn't around and siphon out a gallon of gas. There's no regulation saying you can't do that.
...of course, it's theft. So it's illegal.
"Let the market regulate itself" is an advisement against creating additional rules over and above the law that applies to everyone - I'm not really sure why people keep mistaking this for advocating exemption from the rule of law. In this case there is no market to regulate - you have two co-owners of access points who are destroying one another's systems. We don't need additional regulations - we need to ensure that the current law is applied to this situation.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe you have so many laws that your lawyers and judges can't find those.
Actually, I think you need fewer laws, and better judges.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Shit happens, even to good companies. That's why you diversify your investments! Had you invested $33k in CM, $33k in Company B, and $33k in Company C, you probably wouldn't be in the same situation as you are today. Blame no one but yourself for your investment practices.
-b.
I'll take hypocrisy for $200, Alex (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Network neutrality ensures that broadband providers can't leverage their governmentally-created regional duopolies for nefarious purposes. The phone and cable companies want to be able to (a) double-dip by charging both their home consumers and content providers (who, by the way, already pay their own ISPs) for the same bandwidth and (b) shut out
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a libertarian. It almost always is.
However, I believe that natural monopolies are a place where government intervention can be justified sometimes. A larger coercion can exist when someone has no choice than the minor coercion of a use tax with equality of access.
I believe in the concept of net neutrality, I don't agree with the current legislative attempts to enforce it.
The solution is as someone else mentione
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. I live in Orem, UT where project Utopia is busy wiring houses up with fiber. There are plenty of service providers competing to provide phone, television, and Internet services over this fiber including what is in my opinion the best ISP on the planet, xmission.com.
If projects like this make economic sense in Utah, then they almost certainly are a no brainer anywhere else.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There are only two (duopoly) broadband ISPs in most US markets: your cable company and your phone company, where, in each case, we are talking the company that actually owns the wires going to your home. In the spheres of cable TV and telephone service, these are each highly regulated monopoly utilities that derive their monopoly power from physical limitations that the government acceded to decades ago.
And? A network company that pulls that will hemorrhage customers.
Easy Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Stop letting the companies control the wires (Score:5, Informative)
Now, instead of getting crazy plans with no upload and bad ping times, I have my choice of four different providers for data, three (soon to be four) for voice, and three for video. All running on the same set of community fiber. The data plan I'm on right now is 15mbps SYMMETRIC for around $45/month. Business plans through this same company ( http://www.xmission.com/ [xmission.com] ) give you a full 30mbps for $110/month. Oh, and I get a 26ms ping time to google, and 2ms ping time to my ISP.
If you had options like this, you wouldn't need to worry about the net neutrality bills, because if your service provider started degrading service for something you liked, you could just jump ship because there would be plenty of other options for you. You wouldn't be stuck under the iron fist of some "controlled" monopoly.
Seriously, call your city council and ask them why your city isn't this cool yet. I mean, if Utah can do it... what's stopping your state?
Dude because it is Utah. (Score:2)
Like half the people there speak a second language. And I don't just mean Spanish. You have farm boys that speak fluent Korean or Japanese!
Kids everywhere, no good bars, what maybe two strip clubs in the state, people mountain biking and snow boarding.
It is just freaky.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Don't they still have "private clubs" which can serve pretty much anything they want to (as opposed to weak piss-beer in normal bars)? You just need to pay a $5 or $10 "membership" fee at the door to "join". Not really worse than a cover charge in a bar elsewhere.
-b.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I am a Mormon and my wife went to BYU. I am not from Utah myself so as a small joke I mixed a bunch of stereotypes with a little bit of the truth.
In my small ward we have people that speak French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Korean, and Swedish.
Yea Mormons are supposed to not drink alcohol, use tobacco, coffee, and tea. Along with a lot of other things. Also there is a lot of great mountain biking in Utah.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't knock Utah, esp if you live there. It has a large Mormon population, and whatever else you say about them, Mormons are practical, hard-working, and (yet) community-oriented. This is actually one of the few places where something like that would work and go through without the large corporations lobbying it out of existence.
$45 for 15mb symmetric? I'm jealous, co
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I had to read that twice... 'flyover' means 'overpass' [wikipedia.org] outside of America, so you gave me an interesting mental image of Utah.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But they're all on I-15 (Score:2)
Look at the coverage map [utopianet.org]. They've just wired a few small cities alongside I-15. They don't even have service in Salt Lake City.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I run my own email server (with greylisting), a web server which I have both my personal site and do demos for clients. A few of them have remarked on how fast my demo server is. The only limit I have is a 100GB/month total transfer limit. Another one of the pro
Re: (Score:2)
Be nice if that was true. From their web site [utopianet.org], emphasis mine:
Service providers who want to offer services on an open network are welcome to apply to UTOPIA. While the network is being constructed and the number of users is limited, practical necessity dictates that the number of service providers will be increased gradually. For service providers to be added to the UTOPIA Community MetroNet fiber-optic network, they must meet the following criteria
Cable Wars (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cable Wars (Score:4, Informative)
For over a year now Verizon has been wiring the entire county I work in with their new fiber. Their digging crews have done enormous amounts of damage to our underground lines and continue to do more every day. We have employees who work full time doing nothing but repairing damage from Verizon. Ironically our customers who are upset from the outages caused by Verizon often end up subscribing to their new fiber services as a result of it.
We also have another cable company in our area with lines that run parallel to ours. We rarely ever have problems with that competitor and in some areas we share cable lines to homes or apartments for customers switching between companies.
This sounds like the early 1900s ... (Score:5, Interesting)
-b.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
support wimax (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: support wimax (Score:2)
Transporter_ii
Re: (Score:2)
Besides everything you mention WiMax also has a very unpleasant saturation curve. It deteriorates in a non-linear manner as the number of subscribers increase. Something like exponential. So it is good for early adopters. As a mass technology it will suck eggz unless loads of hardware (base stations) are thrown at it to keep the number of subscribers served by a single basestation as low as possible. As a result as the number of your subscribers grow you end up having to buy exponentially more e
Re: (Score:2)
1b. Consider that your ISP may have a 'mom and pop' look and feel, but may really be financed or operated by a larger company.
2. You dont ask for a 'linux' connection. You ask for a broadband connection, delivered via ethernet/DHCP. What OS you might use is irellevant.
Re: (Score:2)
If you want to remain ignorant, feel free to do so. Just recognize that your arguments will be false, and therefore ignored, by anyone that chooses not to.
Turf wars? (Score:5, Funny)
East Coast Cable don't take no shit from West Coast Bell! Word up!
[News later that day...]
"Notorious B.E.L.L. was found with all their wires cut this morning as phone and cable gang wars heat up."
Is there any reason I should trust either of these (Score:2)
Time for WiFi to enter the fray, so we can have yet ANOTHER alternative!
A weird thing happened at my house the other day.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I didn't know if he was just screwing with me for telling him to beat it or not, so I called the cable company and asked them about this and they professed total ignorance. I had the company info off the side of the guys truck and called another day (in order to speak to someone else because I actually have the local cable office number [a nightmare to obtain in and of itself]) to see if they used this company and it turns out they do.
The guy had confirmed the address and name on the address so he didn't have a typo on his work order (which I never got to see), but it was a weird experience...
Re:A weird thing happened at my house the other da (Score:3, Informative)
The guy was obviously trespassing. Why didn't you take pictures of him, his truck's license plate, and what he was doing and call the cops? Better yet, depending on the state, you could have conceivably done a citizen's arrest since he was asked to leave twice and didn't. "Officer, I just caught a man attempting to burglarize my
Re: (Score:2)
Re:A weird thing happened at my house the other da (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:A weird thing happened at my house the other da (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Potentially taking someone's life is a very serious act. Say he was casing my house. If I suspected that, I'd be all for beating his a**, but shooting him? Why? That's cowardly.
Re:A weird thing happened at my house the other da (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Most people don't have a survey done before they buy a house.
Re: (Score:2)
You're on crack! Its very hard to get a mortgage or title insurance without having a survey done. The lender wants to know exactly what he's buying. That survey includes a visit to the courthouse so that they can locate any properly filed right-of-ways that the structures on the property might encroach.
If there are utility cables running across your yard, they almost certainly have a right-of-way.
Not necessarily. Phone and cable companies are noto
Re: (Score:2)
You're just plain wrong. You don't need to have a survey done to do a title search. The results of a title search aren't necessarily available to the buyer if the search is done by the financial institution or the title insurance company. This is generally because, in order to save money, the company doing the search doesn't actually produce a comprehensive report like you would get from a survey. The only thing
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Search google for "telephone right-of-way condemnation". Add 'state' or 'federal' on the end.
Re: (Score:2)
At any rate, condemnation for the purpose of creating a right of way involves a process which includes compensating the property owner and (surprise!) filing the change to the property where the property records are kept. In other wor
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What if it wasn't a cable contractor employee working in his official capacity, but someone "casing" the neighborhood for a later burglary? He was asked to leave twice and didn't. I'd have at the very least called the cops on him. I hope that someone mistakes the fucker for a burglar one day even if he isn't and
Went into a "Phone Room" (Score:2, Interesting)
Is it the phone company's conduit? (Score:5, Informative)
I carefully researched this a couple years ago when I worked for an ISP and wanted Cox to install fiber for us. Doing it cheaply required using conduit that Bell Atlantic (Verizon) had installed eight years earlier. Cos installed brought the fiber off the poles they both rented from Dominion Power and straight into the conduit system Bell had installed.
The Baby Bells' can complain all they want but its their own shoddy business practices which have left them open to this. Besides, in our case (as in most cases) the Bells' installation cost had long since been paid off by our purchase of Bell services. The conduit was ours. Fair is fair.
A couple of things (Score:2)
I am happy to see an incumbent Bell losing business though. But one other thing astounds me. Right now for digital cable and HSI with Cox I pay $114 a month. Phoenix gets phone thrown in for $99 a month? WTF!
But knowing Cox like I know Cox that's a six month deal and after that it'll jump to $150 or $160 a month.
One
Re: (Score:2)
That would just be regional pricing differences. I know people like to think of the economy as a single, national element, but it's more local than that. People in more affluent areas of the country will pay more for the same services as people in less affluent areas. The company I work for charges $45
LOL (Score:2)
From: The Cable-Guy, Tele-dude, and Congress (Score:2)
FUCK YOU,FUCK OFF, PAY-ME-NOW FOR WHATEVER YOU FUCKING GET!
You damn stupid dick-wad customers this is the USA where Big-Bussiness is KING!
RESPECTFULLY Signed By:
The Cable-Guy, Tele-dude, and Congress
Slightly OT... (Score:2)
Why do they think people are going to switch from their existing service, to an equal-priced, equal featured service, provided by a different company?
If either wants customers, they're going to have to start competing on features (not the trivial crap they're touting now) or price. They seem to want to do neither, and hope they can just magically turn a profit.
My desir
And lower reliability. (Score:2)
Our spiffy new VOIP telephones went dead about three minutes into the outage.
The fifteen-year-old whaddayacallems (once one would have said PBX), which they haven't gotten around to removing yet, lasted about an hour.
My cell phone had dial tone for about two hours. (I expected better than that, actually. I was quite disappointed. My phone showed four bars of battery life, but no signal at
Re: (Score:2)
Cable, cell, digital phone, all the 'new' stuff, needs power at all sorts of remote nodes/huts. They simply cant put sufficient batteries or generators in place to keep them all up.
As far as the main story, the telco and the cableco are both used to being monopolies in their areas. If they were to compete fairly, that might be good. But monopo
Re: (Score:2)
your company could if they wanted buy similar backups for thier internal systems, obviously they decided that it wasn't worth the price (i'm not sure how keeping the phones up is that usefull in a modern office if you don't keep the computers up as well and keeping computers up during
Similar but different.... (Score:2)
Well, this was dot-com and a telco put a pop basically in my front yard. I was able to get a full T1 for an extremely low price. Once it was installed, I had the cable modem turned off. However,
In fact I've heard this just recently (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Organized crime exists in other countries, including Asia and Russia. Ever heard of the Yakuza? The "Russian Mafiya?" I'm sure China has its own homegrown organized thugs along similar lines.
-b.
Re: (Score:2)
It can be a numbers game to get the most suckers -- um, customers -- signed up as quickly as possible to gain market share. Maybe later they will start worrying about quality when suckers -- um, customers -- quit the service and their market share goes down. Being first is sometime more important than being better.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, the best stupid/evil cable company story I've ever heard involves getting wrongly prosecuted for cable theft. [geocities.com] About 8 years back, Comcast's cable TV and cable internet entities each didn't know what the other was doing. A woman got Comcast internet service but chose to not get cable TV. Comcast's TV techs kept disconnecting her because their records didn't show her as a TV customer, their internet service techs kept reconnecting her. Eventually they attempted to pro
Had to laugh (Score:2)
>didn't show her as a TV customer, their internet service techs
>kept reconnecting her. Eventually they attempted to prosecute her
>for theft of cable TV service.
Had to laugh
A tech knocked on the door, "want to subscribe to TV"? My wife says no thanks. Little while later, he comes back, knocks on the door, "want to subscribe to TV"? Um, still no, WTH?