Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Comcast accused of cutting competitor’s wires to put it out of business

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 194 posts

Re: Comcast accused of cutting competitor’s wires to put it out of business

#11

Post by crooked-v »

pwerner2 wrote: post #7

Former Comcast cable technician here. I was an in-house tech, and corporate has ludicrous quality standards and nitpicky, white-glove QC's after an in-house tech leaves a job. However, the company obviously employs a TON of _independent contractors_. Some of these contractors are excellent at their jobs, but a lot of them aren't, and as they're not subject to any real oversight by the corporation, you really don't kn…

Intentionally cutting lines that don't need to be cut to do your install is more than just "lazy".

Re: Comcast accused of cutting competitor’s wires to put it out of business

#12

Post by Analemma_ »

javiramos wrote: post #8
kodt wrote: post #4

This does not surprise me, in fact a Comcast technician told me they do this (on a much smaller scale) by disconnecting or cutting competitors' cable runs to buildings they are working on (and also sometimes their own). I lived in a multi-unit apartment building and one day noticed my internet was down (I was a Comcast subscriber). I was suspicious because a Comcast technician was just out earlier in the day installi…

Exactly this happened to me about a month ago. I switched from Provider_A to Provider_B. Provider_A totally sabotaged the connection hardware when it disconnected the service. Provider_B's technician had a very hard time redoing the connection hardware. It's amazing to me that all these connections are still physicial (as opposed to some software-defined switching between providers). Something akin to software-define…

> It's amazing to me that all these connections are still physicial (as opposed to some software-defined switching between providers). Something akin to software-defined networking.

What you're describing is called "local loop unbundling". Lots of other countries do it, it works great, and it would solve most if not all of the problems with the telco market in the US... so naturally these companies lobby hard to make sure it'll never happen.

Re: Comcast accused of cutting competitor’s wires to put it out of business

#13

Post by rgbrenner »

pwerner2 wrote: post #7

Former Comcast cable technician here. I was an in-house tech, and corporate has ludicrous quality standards and nitpicky, white-glove QC's after an in-house tech leaves a job. However, the company obviously employs a TON of _independent contractors_. Some of these contractors are excellent at their jobs, but a lot of them aren't, and as they're not subject to any real oversight by the corporation, you really don't kn…

> instead of malicious action on the part of Comcast.

Im not so sure of that. The destruction occurred from June 15th to Aug 1st (when they lost their last customer) -- thats 6 weeks -- using over 4000ft of cable for repairs.

If comcast was notified after the first incident, and it continued for 6 weeks.. doesn't that indicate malicious intent?

Re: Comcast accused of cutting competitor’s wires to put it out of business

#14

Post by noonespecial »

Even if this was accidental and overblown (as lawsuits often are: one side of the story etc...), Comcast has a steep hill to climb because of their terrible reputation.

I think they're going to get completely hosed in court over this. Being assholes to everyone you deal with can have surprising hidden costs.

Re: Comcast accused of cutting competitor’s wires to put it out of business

#15

Post by kw71 »

kodt wrote: post #4

This does not surprise me, in fact a Comcast technician told me they do this (on a much smaller scale) by disconnecting or cutting competitors' cable runs to buildings they are working on (and also sometimes their own). I lived in a multi-unit apartment building and one day noticed my internet was down (I was a Comcast subscriber). I was suspicious because a Comcast technician was just out earlier in the day installi…

Verizon engages in these shenanigans too.

Re: Comcast accused of cutting competitor’s wires to put it out of business

#16

Post by pjc50 »

javiramos wrote: post #8
kodt wrote: post #4

This does not surprise me, in fact a Comcast technician told me they do this (on a much smaller scale) by disconnecting or cutting competitors' cable runs to buildings they are working on (and also sometimes their own). I lived in a multi-unit apartment building and one day noticed my internet was down (I was a Comcast subscriber). I was suspicious because a Comcast technician was just out earlier in the day installi…

Exactly this happened to me about a month ago. I switched from Provider_A to Provider_B. Provider_A totally sabotaged the connection hardware when it disconnected the service. Provider_B's technician had a very hard time redoing the connection hardware. It's amazing to me that all these connections are still physicial (as opposed to some software-defined switching between providers). Something akin to software-define…

> Something akin to software-defined networking

What you want is "local loop unbundling". It's how this works in Europe where you have artificial non-free markets with real price competition, rather than natural monopolies without price competition as in the US.

Re: Comcast accused of cutting competitor’s wires to put it out of business

#17

Post by [deleted] »

crooked-v wrote: post #11
pwerner2 wrote: post #7

Former Comcast cable technician here. I was an in-house tech, and corporate has ludicrous quality standards and nitpicky, white-glove QC's after an in-house tech leaves a job. However, the company obviously employs a TON of _independent contractors_. Some of these contractors are excellent at their jobs, but a lot of them aren't, and as they're not subject to any real oversight by the corporation, you really don't kn…

Intentionally cutting lines that don't need to be cut to do your install is more than just "lazy".

[deleted]

Re: Comcast accused of cutting competitor’s wires to put it out of business

#18

Post by distantsounds »

In a shared-housing unit, a Comcast tech once cut the coax wires going to my FiOS box when installing internet for new tenants. Why he felt the need to touch my wiring is beyond me. The tech had to come back (albeit hours later) to undo the damage he did. A minor annoyance, but just adds onto the anecdotes of stories about the techs not knowing what they are doing.

Re: Comcast accused of cutting competitor’s wires to put it out of business

#19

Post by accountyaccount »

kw71 wrote: post #15
kodt wrote: post #4

This does not surprise me, in fact a Comcast technician told me they do this (on a much smaller scale) by disconnecting or cutting competitors' cable runs to buildings they are working on (and also sometimes their own). I lived in a multi-unit apartment building and one day noticed my internet was down (I was a Comcast subscriber). I was suspicious because a Comcast technician was just out earlier in the day installi…

Verizon engages in these shenanigans too.

I actually had a FiOS installer tell me that he cut a neighboring building's Comcast line because my line needed to run through their property and they were dicks about letting him on the property to run my lines.

He was almost unreasonably nice and professional to me otherwise. One of the best/cleanest installs I've ever had for anything.

Re: Comcast accused of cutting competitor’s wires to put it out of business

#20

Post by camus2 »

pwerner2 wrote: post #7

Former Comcast cable technician here. I was an in-house tech, and corporate has ludicrous quality standards and nitpicky, white-glove QC's after an in-house tech leaves a job. However, the company obviously employs a TON of _independent contractors_. Some of these contractors are excellent at their jobs, but a lot of them aren't, and as they're not subject to any real oversight by the corporation, you really don't kn…

> However, the company obviously employs a TON of _independent contractors_.

They are contractors and do what Comcast tell them. "It was a contractor" is the laziest corporate excuse. But that's one reason why big businesses employ them, plausible deniability when things go wrong.

Post reply on HN