A New Technology For These Parts
Yes, it’s here: fiber internet. Well, it’s been here locally for just more than a year, but I didn’t want to be a guinea pig. Yesterday afternoon I helped (debatable) the fiber technician install a five hundred foot cable along three telephone poles to get from the junction box to my house. It was about 100F outside, but he is young and quite a trooper. Very polite and professional, too. His fiance stopped by to bring him some food and drinks.
I say “helped” him install the cable but it’s more like I tried to help. That cable has a fiber optic and a steel wire inside, and it is very springy. I did my best, but some of the inner loops started coming out of the coil and it took us another thirty minutes to untangle the mess. He said those longer coils of cable tend to get messy like that, though. In the end, I gave him a $40 tip for his troubles.
Glad I finally made the switch to fiber. The biggest plus so far is the symmetrical bandwidth. No more 20 megabit upload restrictions, which means this goofy website loads faster, too. Hopefully it will be more future-proof and reliable than the old coaxial cable network.
Canceling a Flaky Cable ISP
Today it was like pulling teeth trying to cancel the cable internet service provider (ISP). But they have been getting my money for a long time, so I don’t feel too bad. I figure $50 per month on average for tweny years comes out to $12,000. Yeah, not too bad at all. The customer support rep did his level best to sweeten the pot to get me to stay, and I almost took him up on it. After all, having redundant internet would be nice, right?
However, they have kind of been falling down on the job a bit lately in regards to their line quality. I have had at least three visits from technicians and maintenance in the past year. When the city moved some telephone poles in the neighborhood a couple years ago, they just kind of stretched the coax line from my house to the new pole, without replacing it. Then, last summer, a maintenance worker disconnected my drop line during the day (I was in a work meeting) to relieve some of the tension. When I went outside to see what was going on, he told me I had to call another technician to get it fixed. I set up said appointment; the next guy (tatted up, kind of an atitude) came and said he couldn’t fix it because he didn’t have a bucket truck or a long enough ladder, but said it was probably fine as-is. He also said the maintenance crew are kind of jerks. Infighting in the ranks, well that’s typical I guess. But it was working fine so I didn’t sweat it too much.
Several months go by, and a maintenance crew drives by in a bucket truck, sees the situation, and proactively adds an extension to my drop cable. This is great, I think. However, it stopped working after an hour and the crew was nowhere to be seen. So, another call to tech support to schedule a fix. Meanwhile my internet is down the rest of the workday, and overnight as well.
A new technician the next day, but I can tell he’s at least got his act together. Despite not having a bucket truck, he gets right up on the pole with a hook ladder and digs into the situation. He quickly discovers that the drop line extension they added the day before had a “suck out”. He cut off the bad connector and showed it to me. There was a single strand of the shielding mesh wire wrapped around the central copper conductor lead! And this guy proactively goes to the supply shop, gets a full spool of reinforced coax, and puts a completley new drop line in from my house to the pole. Finally, some good service!
It has been at least six months or more since the new drop line was installed. You’d think that would have been the end of the saga, but sadly no. Last week I get a voicemail from the ISP saying there is yet an issue on my line, requiring a visit from a technician. I called them to enquire: apparently they are doing “proactive” line monitoring now (like they haven’t been doing anything proactively for years), and they had detected noise on my circuit. I told them about the string of technicians I’ve already had, and could I just keep going as is? To that I was told they may have to put a block on the line. So now I’m actually kind of mad. I tell him I’ll have to think about it, but my mind was made up at that point it was time to switch to fiber.
I will leave the coax lines in place in case I have to go back to cable, but I hope that day doesn’t come at this point! Incidentally, I also use this ISP for my mobile telephone service, and will probably keep that. At least they support the Apple Watch, whereas my previous cellular company couldn’t even muster that.