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Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

bbc.com

141–150 of 304 posts

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#141

I want to know why peoples are paying high for OLD TV's these days. Whats in there?

Mostly retro gamers that want to play games/consoles designed for CRTs just as they did back then. Sometimes museums etc to replace them in installations.

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Comcast wouldn't be able to send anyone out for a month Is there a good explanation for how this can be the case in a developed country?

The invisible hand of the free market did not want anyone there for a month. We all follow the invisible hand (like, instinctively, since it's invisible). You're not questioning the wisdom of the invisible hand, are you?

Don't let the fact that it's incorporated as a private business fool you, Comcast is a government monopoly.

A deregulated ISP market would be a huge improvement for this country!

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just FYI, I really enjoyed your story but I almost closed the tab and didn't read it due to "Read on to find out" in the first paragraph. It sets off all the clickbait alarms in my head, which make me expect to find a bunch of low-quality content. The rj45 cable melting is just as good of a hook (and is actually why I continued reading). I'd suggest sticking the first sentence onto the front of the second paragraph a…

Thanks for that feedback. I'm having to do a lot more writing for my job now so being able to improve my writing with honest feedback is super important. I agree, I even cringed a little bit when I wrote it. But I didn't want to fully give everything away so it was just a bad edit :) Your suggestion would work a lot better.

Be sure to write specifically for your target audience. That clickbait would work if your target was the Lowest Common Denominator. It doesn't work so well with a highly technical audience.

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#144
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think past around 20Mbit or so the returns are diminishing. My flat has 400Mbit or so from Virgin, and although the WiFi is excellent (uncontended airwaves around here), actually availing of it requires you perched within reasonable proximity of the router, and pulling from a site with a large enough outbound pipe. On average it is probably fair to expect 8Mbit/s egress from any particular Internet site, with worst…

Things are a little different When you have multiple people trying to work from home. Even if a single connection is limited to 8Mbps a fatter pipe helps because you have more than one connection at any given time. Oh and fiber can do xMbps both ways I believe. Even Comcast gigabit is only 30Mbps up. Where in the US can I get: 1. Cheap land to build a house 2. Under half an hour drive to Costco/sams club 3. Paved roa…

Kansas City suburbs. Though Google has halted their Google Fiber expansion plans, AT&T has a fiber service.

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#146

I recently had my own host of cable internet issues. So about 3 months ago the RJ45 cable in my cable modem melted . I thought it was a freak accident. I checked all of my networking equipment, checked my outlets, etc. No problems. So I installed a new cable and then everything was fine. Cue 2 weeks ago. Connectivity became intermittent and then finally I had no internet for almost a week. Comcast wouldn't be able to…

In India, ISPs intentionally cut the cables to annoy competitor's customers. It's insane how many people don't do anything but simply switch while being aware.

Don't worry, that happens in the US too. Super annoying and dishonest.

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#147
post #33

I naively thought this was going to be somewhere like rural India, not the UK (albeit relatively rural Wales). I'm forever calling out engineers because the line crackles to the point it's difficult to take a call and my internet speed drops from ~65Mbps to ~10. Maybe I should start looking for old TVs. Somehow, being on a road where the houses were only built 5 years ago we have copper lines and on my side of the st…

Five years ago (assuming you weren't exaggerating) the house builder chose not to bother calling Openreach about the new homes they were building. They chose to wait until the last minute and then say "We're a house builder, just put up a few new houses, so connect them to a phone line for us OK?" If they instead engage at the outset, Openreach says OK, you need to put in ducting to run fibre to each house from the s…

May 2015 we moved in.

I've no idea what the engagement was like, but it was Redrow so I doubt they just slapped the 50 or so houses up and then thought about it.

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#149
We sell gear to find these kinds of issues. The best story so far, was a little old lady with an ancient table-side lamp, which had a faulty connection, which would sometimes arc, with just the right shape of wire attached to it to broadcast noise all over the GSM bands.

Now GSM is (from the perspective of the phone's broadcasts), pretty weak, so that enough to periodically wipe out cell service for a couple of neighbourhood blocks.

Re: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

#150
post #33

I naively thought this was going to be somewhere like rural India, not the UK (albeit relatively rural Wales). I'm forever calling out engineers because the line crackles to the point it's difficult to take a call and my internet speed drops from ~65Mbps to ~10. Maybe I should start looking for old TVs. Somehow, being on a road where the houses were only built 5 years ago we have copper lines and on my side of the st…

Buy yourself an RTL dongle and a wide-spectrum omnidirectional antenna and run a spectrum analyser when the problems recurs. That will get you the frequency, bandwidth and modulation of the interfering signal. I'm dismayed but not surprised that Openreach in the linked example launched straight into replacing sections of cable. They don't seem to spend much time actually analysing a problem.

RE RTL dongle.. Or tune your AM radio to ~612kHz to listen to the REIN
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