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

91–100 of 194 posts

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

#91

Post by Chaebixi »

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…

I used to live in an apartment building and park next to one of the cable distribution boxes. One day, while was sitting in my car, I saw a Comcast technician walk up to the box, open it, clip one of the wires with wirecutters, close it up, and move on, all in less than a minute. I assume he was acting against a cable pirate, but it was so fast I have no idea if he actually got the right unit.

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

#93

Post by rayiner »

pjc50 wrote: post #16
javiramos wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

None of the big European countries (Germany, the U.K., Spain, France, and Italy) require unbundling cable lines: http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2-7.pdf. Unbundling of POTS in the US was not much of a boon, because DSL was a dead-end technology even then.

What Europe does isn't really a good benchmark for how to structure a telecom market, because all the big European countries have slower broadband than in the US: https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-t... (the U.S. beats the U.K., Germany, Spain, France, Italy--which accounts for 2/3 of the population of the EU).

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

#95

Post by kcanini »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #71
openmosix wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is true, what is fascinating is that it means Comcast has no way to know who is a legitimate customer and who is not - if they have to rely on the customer to make the call and verify to be a legitimate user. How can they run a business like that?

What baffles me is that communications companies routinely complain that rolling a van and tech to anywhere is "expensive". They are willfully wasting money if what you say is true. I doubt that this is worth finding out who is their customer and who isn't.

They probably mean "expensive for the customer", not "expensive for us".

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

#96

Post by londons_explore »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #71
openmosix wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is true, what is fascinating is that it means Comcast has no way to know who is a legitimate customer and who is not - if they have to rely on the customer to make the call and verify to be a legitimate user. How can they run a business like that?

What baffles me is that communications companies routinely complain that rolling a van and tech to anywhere is "expensive". They are willfully wasting money if what you say is true. I doubt that this is worth finding out who is their customer and who isn't.

Could it be the techs do it because they know there's a good chance they personally will be called out to fix it. Probably called out late at night, and collecting lots of overtime money?

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

#97

Post by rayiner »

CaptSpify wrote: post #90
rayiner wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a contractor did it, the company isn't liable. It's precisely why Uber fights so hard to keep drivers classified as contractors rather than employees.

Legally speaking, you are likely correct. I'm saying that they should be.

If you hire a contractor to trim your trees, should you be liable if they drop a branch on your neighbor's roof?

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

#98

Post by londons_explore »

Chaebixi wrote: post #91
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…

I used to live in an apartment building and park next to one of the cable distribution boxes. One day, while was sitting in my car, I saw a Comcast technician walk up to the box, open it, clip one of the wires with wirecutters , close it up, and move on, all in less than a minute. I assume he was acting against a cable pirate, but it was so fast I have no idea if he actually got the right unit.

Giving himself extra overtime work?

Gotta be quick because his van probably has a GPS tracker on it, and he'd have to explain to his boss why his truck was parked there for 20 mins otherwise.

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

#99

Post by londons_explore »

noonespecial wrote: post #14

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.

Doubt they have enough evidence...

Knowing if something was accidental or deliberate is super hard.

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

#100

Post by andy_ppp »

rayiner wrote: post #93
pjc50 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

None of the big European countries (Germany, the U.K., Spain, France, and Italy) require unbundling cable lines: http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2-7.pdf . Unbundling of POTS in the US was not much of a boon, because DSL was a dead-end technology even then. What Europe does isn't really a good benchmark for how to structure a telecom market, because all the big European countries have slower broadband than in the US…

If this is true why is my Virgin Media fibre pretty damn fast and reliable and every American seems to constantly whinge about their cable provider?
Post reply on HN