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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

#131

Post by ethbro »

alexanderstocko wrote: post #24
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…

Something similar just happened to me yesterday. My condo building has multiple providers: AT&T, Comcast, and Gigamonster. Apparently a Comcast technician "accidentally" disconnected my 1gbps Gigamonster service while setting up a new Comcast client in my floor's Telecom utility closet. I've lived in highrise complexes for the past decade and have experienced this type of outage four times. The common denominator see…

A Comcast tech (who was out as a preliminary to getting a run buried to my then-unserved house) cut my ATT DSL line because he "assumed it wasn't being used." (Even though he wasn't installing anything that day)

Since then, I watch Comcast techs work, tell them exactly where to term and where to stop, and then to get the hell off my property.

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

#132

Post by doctorshady »

ozaark wrote: post #129
djrogers wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently? How about the last 20+ years?

At least they would listen to the public and revert rather than continue on sidelining stolen identity en masse for ISP support. Today it's people vs corporate lobbyist paid accounts/bots and the ability to spam conversation.

The more I think about it, the more a legal solution like the ones these guys are advocating more makes sense: http://irregulators.org/ .

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

#134

Post by doctorshady »

rayiner wrote: post #130
TillE wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VDSL is certainly not a "dead end". 50Mbit is available in most of Germany, with 100Mbit slowly rolling out. A lot of people will opt for the cheaper standard DSL though (<16Mbit), which I suspect is what brings down the average. In the US you have little choice but to pay obscene prices for a very fast cable line, usually with a monthly cap.

In the US, 100 Mbps availability hit 60% in 2014, and the next milestone is gigabit.

How often is the performance difference between 100 megabit and gigabit internet all that measurable, though? For that matter, how often do truly get even, say, 900 megabits allocated to you on that sort of connection?

I'm not doubting they actually give you a gigabit connection, but especially during peak hours, I doubt the transit links you hit would necessarily have that much to spare.

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

#135

Post by ferongr »

TillE wrote: post #124
rayiner wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

VDSL is certainly not a "dead end". 50Mbit is available in most of Germany, with 100Mbit slowly rolling out. A lot of people will opt for the cheaper standard DSL though (<16Mbit), which I suspect is what brings down the average. In the US you have little choice but to pay obscene prices for a very fast cable line, usually with a monthly cap.

The 35b profile with active DSLAMs in neighborhood cabinets "may" reach 300mbps with a fully vectored network (but just a couple of loops not being vectored greatly reduces speeds [1]). It still requires lots of infrastructure upgrades, replacing the old passive cabinets with bigger active ones containing DSLAMs, laying lots of fiber around etc. I still think its a dead end and countries like Greece that only now are installing such networks are making a big mistake.

FTTB, either through G.FAST OR Ethernet is a better use of all that money in my opinion and it's a lot easier to upgrade in the future (either the building terminal or switcing to full fiber i.e. AON/GPON etc).

[1] https://i.imgur.com/39pCRjN.png

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

#136

Post by paul7986 »

Comcast customer service is terrible and will always remain terrible until they bring ALL of their customer service and technicians in house and pay them handsomely.

Until then they will always remain at the bottom of the barrel and as the most hated company in the country due to horrid customer service.

I worked at Comcast for too many years answering their phones and getting yelled out because 80% of the time due to the contracted technicians and the companies they work for.

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

#138

Post by Karunamon »

paul7986 wrote: post #136

Comcast customer service is terrible and will always remain terrible until they bring ALL of their customer service and technicians in house and pay them handsomely. Until then they will always remain at the bottom of the barrel and as the most hated company in the country due to horrid customer service. I worked at Comcast for too many years answering their phones and getting yelled out because 80% of the time due t…

I can vouch for this. Not only are the contracted techs horrible, the internal billing system is this byzantine fuckfest of terse codes and multiple, poorly-documented applications.

I spent 6 months putting up with angry phone calls from a small ISP that Comcast absorbed before I had to quit for my own mental health.

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

#139

Post by rincebrain »

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 had a similar, if less malicious, story from my past.

At a prior home, I had Comcast, and my internet suddenly went out one day. Tech comes out, confirms it's not something inside, pops outside onto the pole behind the house and it comes back.

A few days later, it suddenly goes completely out again. Call, get another tech out, he goes up on the pole, comes back and says "yeah, there's not enough plugs up there so the last few techs have presumably just been unplugging someone and plugging whoever complained in", and then we get some time spent to remedy this situation. [1]

I spent a bit of time wondering how many people might have had spontaneous outages before this tech who actually tried to address the issue came out, as I knew quite a few people on my block had Comcast (aside from the xfinitywifi, you could tell because they'd all come outside almost immediately if they were at home and a persistent outage happened).

[1] - I have no idea what the equivalent terms or appearance for a coax patch panel would be, my apologies for any mangling.

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

#140

Post by rayiner »

doctorshady wrote: post #134
rayiner wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, 100 Mbps availability hit 60% in 2014, and the next milestone is gigabit.

How often is the performance difference between 100 megabit and gigabit internet all that measurable, though? For that matter, how often do truly get even, say, 900 megabits allocated to you on that sort of connection? I'm not doubting they actually give you a gigabit connection, but especially during peak hours, I doubt the transit links you hit would necessarily have that much to spare.

It's the tail end of the PM peak here, and I'm getting 420 mbps to my web host, about 450 to Azure (on a 500/500). I think it's growing pains from Verizon's gigabit rollout, because when I was at 300/300, I consistently got over the rated speed.
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