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

arstechnica.com

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

#111

Post by ufo »

rgbrenner wrote: post #13
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?

In addition to that, Telecom Cable also accused Comcast of systematically cutting the lines leading to every single one of their customers. They argue that if the damage were accidental it would not have been as comprehensive.

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

#112

Post by Paul-ish »

londons_explore wrote: post #99
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.

At some point does it cross into negligence and come with steep civil penalties? That would be the best way to stop this kind of thing at the moment.

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

#113

Post by Paul-ish »

r00fus wrote: post #37
jamroom wrote: post #2

Wow - if true I really hope Comcast gets taken to the cleaners over this. We REALLY need more ISP competition in the US- this is just ridiculous.

Competition will not exist due to natural monopolies for the last-mile wiring issues. What is required is effective regulation. Which the new FCC head just gutted.

If we want laws to fix this, penalizing large companies that damage others wires due to gross negligence sounds like a good start.

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

#115

Post by pwerner2 »

protomyth wrote: post #68
pwerner2 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't buy it" Ah, sorry, I forgot I was on the internet, land of experts in everything.

More like people who have had to deal with Comcast. Thankfully, I'm in rural ND where I can get good fiber and not the crap my Dad has had to put up with. The number of splitters in the wall was impressive though.

Excessive splitters usually is a sign of ancient cabling as well. I know for a fact that Comcast has passive gain amps specifically built for dealing with homes that have more than like 8 tv's and a modem. You (or your dad, it's unclear) probably were hooked up a long time ago, or the tech didn't know what he was doing.

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

#116

Post by sxates »

justinlink wrote: post #31
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…

Last year a neighbor had a comcast tech who identified a noisy signal somewhere on our block. He proceeded to disconnect every other house on the block and then left. He never told anyone at Comcast or the other houses. Took hours of battling with phone support and a two day wait to have another tech who came out and identified the problem. He said they do this often to get into houses to find problems but he's suppo…

This happened to me as well - Comcast tech A gets on our house to disconnect a "noisy line" and doesn't tell us or anyone else about it, requiring me to wait for Comcast tech B to come out and reconnect. And of course we heard nothing more about this "noisy line" issue, with no changes made to our connection.

Just one of the reasons I no longer use comcast.

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

#117

Post by andy_ppp »

rayiner wrote: post #107
andy_ppp wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What do you mean, "if this is true?" I linked my sources (Akamai and OECD)--you can see for yourself. As far as that perception goes, my suspicion is that it has to do with the tech press/readership skewing young and urban. The U.S. is highly unusual in making the actual building of wires largely a state/local issue, and also in treating cities as ghettos instead of national priorities. Maryland, where I live, is a m…

So what you’re saying is averages don’t give the whole picture?

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

#118

Post by Latty »

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…

I'm the UK, the vast, vast majority of cable infrastructure is owned by openreach (BT) because it used to be a government run service. While it's not a general requirement, it is one for them, which in effect means it is general.

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

#119

Post by ndespres »

I don't doubt that the linked story is true, but I know that individually this can happen all the time inadvertently. I worked for an ISP which provided "dry loop DSL" (DSL without dialtone service on the phone line) in the mid-2000s and as a consequence of having internet service from a 3rd party over telco pairs with no phone numbers attached, the local phone companies would regularly re-use our customers' lines for new phone installations. Since they were not tagged with phone numbers in the exchange building, and had no dialtone, the phone company techs had no way to tell the lines were in use.

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

#120

Post by covercash »

pwerner2 wrote: post #109
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…

I am astonished. This is not a complicated issue. This is sensationalism. Before any of you "vote" on anything, consider exactly what it is that you're criticising. As it is, I'll bet almost all of you have never turned a wrench, let alone crawled into some ungrateful asshole's filthy attic or appalling, sewage filled crawlspace to replace a corroded cable fitting so said customer could spank his monkey at 3am to shi…

Sure, every company is made up of people. Comcast just happens to be made up of a lot of people lacking integrity. It's part of the company culture, trickling down from the top.
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