271–280 of 304 posts
Relevant story time! The neighbor would often complain about his cable and ask if I had the same problems. I did. One day, he'd had enough, and switched to DSL and satellite. My house's connectivity issues vanished.
I had to get one to make MOCA (ethernet over cable) work in my current house.
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On my street, my house is one of 4 connected directly to the exchange instead of a cabinet, which means I can't get fibre (only FTTC is available here). BT/Openreach/Whoever aren't interested in changing this, but luckily I can get Virgin Media (overpriced IMO, but better than the 20Mb alternative).
Openreach certainly are interested in converting homes from EO to a street cabinet and have done this many times, but that's little comfort to you because they haven't done yours yet. In some cases Openreach converts from EO to FTTP, so you go from only having very poor ADSL2 available to 300Mbps or better available over fibre.
“We don’t have plans to upgrade your area yet. But we’re working with Government and industry to change that.”
Along with the usual “Register your interest” form (which I’ve filled out, but am pretty sure have been done in the past).
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In a properly executed TN-C-S distribution, the TN-C and TN-S sections are separated with a 4 way single junction point where the PEN conductor coming from the station is connected to the local grounding rod and after this the separated PE and Neutral conductors are drawn into the property. Absolutely no circuit breaker is allowed on the PEN conductor upwards of this separation point. This arrangement remains safe re…
That would be safer, yeah, and I agree that's how it should be done. However, we don't do that. Usually, our TN-C-S supplies are just augmented with PME, where the PEN conductor is earthed at multiple points along its run. This is almost equivalent to your description of a separate earth rod in every property, but it's on the main run instead of each branch, and it's not done for every point (e.g. house), nor even ev…
If no one on the street has an earthing rod and the PEN breaks, then all the PE internal wiring of all houses will be connected, via transformers, light-bulbs etc. to the live wire. So every grounded appliance in the area is live. This is such a dangerous scenario that a grounding rod carrying half the current of the street is the least of your worries. All differential protections are also disabled.
Additionally, houses will typically be spread around on a three phase supply with the PEN carrying the disequilibrium current. If PEN breaks uphill from such a distribution cell then you end up with two houses connected in series to two phases, giving a voltage √3 = 1.732... higher than the mains (208 vs 120V in US or 400V vs 230V in Europe). The voltage will spread depending on the resistance of the two houses. So if a house has large consumers it will see a very low voltage, while it's series pair might see a huge voltage spyke. This is an incredibly dangerous scenario from a fire hazard perspective. A similar thing can happen in a 120/240V single phase system.
So, if you want good, solid, safe voltage in TN-C-S systems, a good grounding (preferably less than 1 Ohm) should be connected at the separation point between the TN-Combined supply and your internal TN-Separated wiring. This guarantees your differential protections will work regardless of what happens uphill.
Of course, if this is an uncommon practice in the area and not allowed by local code then that's that. But I wouldn't feel very safe without, at a minimum, a ground fault detection relay (which has it's own mini-earthing rod and detects when PEN floats at a too high voltage), and also a over-voltage protection.
PEN faults are very common, it's not a question of if, it's a question of when. Coaxial supplies are used around here too, with recommended local earthing and mandatory ground fault detection relay if local earthing does not exist. Still, it happens that lighting destroys both the central conductor and the electronic ground relay, yet line voltage still finds a way to shock people (you don't need a very good connection for that). Other times, the aluminum-steel core of the coax breaks down. Other times, idiot electricians work on the network and create PEN faults, exploding all the devices of a certain home by exposing them to three phase voltage.
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ISPs are a natural monopoly [1]. Deregulation is unlikely to fix the issue. Creating (or regulating) a common infrastructure, e.g. poles and/or cable tunnels looks like a better way to induce competition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
The only thing to break the duopoly is some third option that requires no additional last mile infrastructure investment - either a common infrastructure that decouples provider from physical wiring or wireless Internet that isn't horrible.
Regulation deals with the here-and-now.
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ISPs are a natural monopoly [1]. Deregulation is unlikely to fix the issue. Creating (or regulating) a common infrastructure, e.g. poles and/or cable tunnels looks like a better way to induce competition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
You can make a decent natural monopoly argument for cabled ISPs. Still debatable, but it has some merit. But in 2020, wireless ISP work great wherever they're not regulated away. One big problem with regulations is that even if they're beneficial when enacted, they will remain in force for many decades after the underlying reality has changed.
Because in CURRENT_YEAR we don't have to worry about rain fade or quirks of local terrain or unintended interference?
That's quite a big statement to make, generalized over the whole world like that.
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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!
Exactly what regulations are preventing new broadband providers from entering the market?
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ISPs are a natural monopoly [1]. Deregulation is unlikely to fix the issue. Creating (or regulating) a common infrastructure, e.g. poles and/or cable tunnels looks like a better way to induce competition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
You can make a decent natural monopoly argument for cabled ISPs. Still debatable, but it has some merit. But in 2020, wireless ISP work great wherever they're not regulated away. One big problem with regulations is that even if they're beneficial when enacted, they will remain in force for many decades after the underlying reality has changed.
We tend to avoid principles-based regulation in the US, but it's not destiny that regulations remain the same forever, even with our system. We certainly don't have to choose between that and not having any regulations at all (which isn't even an option when you're talking about radio spectrum, or use of wires at the last mile, or whatever).
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You can make a decent natural monopoly argument for cabled ISPs. Still debatable, but it has some merit. But in 2020, wireless ISP work great wherever they're not regulated away. One big problem with regulations is that even if they're beneficial when enacted, they will remain in force for many decades after the underlying reality has changed.
> One big problem with regulations is that even if they're beneficial when enacted, they will remain in force for many decades after the underlying reality has changed. We tend to avoid principles-based regulation in the US, but it's not destiny that regulations remain the same forever, even with our system. We certainly don't have to choose between that and not having any regulations at all (which isn't even an opti…
For radio spectrum you don't need any regulations or regulators. Just establish that radio frequencies in a certain area can be owned, and use general property right rules.
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Then there’s a group of observant Jews that’ll sometimes drop by and kindly come by and fix your fence for free if it’s a part of their eruv, possibly before you know it’s broken https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-invisible-and-often...
> The Toronto eruv alone is estimated to cost $100,000 per year > But being difficult to maintain is kind of the point. Why not implement it as an optical fibre? Non-conducting and easy to continuously check that there are no breaks.
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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.
I think it started with old cable systems where people would connect their cable themselves without paying for service. Then when the techs would go to install service they would see if any of the nearby houses were hooked up without being on the customer list, and cut their cable.
A friend of mine had her cable cut, probably for the same reason. Unfortunately the cable went to her satellite dish, not comcast.
(I guess it could have been competitors too)