. . .
I'm struck by the contrast between the quality of service I got vs. the >"service" - which seems more like abuse - that I hear about when Adam or
anim have to deal with *their* internet providers. Instead of getting
jerked around and having to always pay more, sometimes for less service,
I got more services for considerably less money.
Of course it isn't *always* that way in this country. Bell and its main >competitor Rogers used to be notorious for crappy service and
ever-increasing prices, just like American ISPs. But Bell at least seems
to have changed their attitude and is trying to win customers and keep
the ones they have. That's the way capitalism is *supposed* to work,
even if it doesn't always work out that way, especially in the >semi-monopolies like Internet and telecoms. (At least their
semi-monopolies in this country; in the US, not so much.)
Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
. . .
I'm struck by the contrast between the quality of service I got vs. the
"service" - which seems more like abuse - that I hear about when Adam or
anim have to deal with *their* internet providers. Instead of getting
jerked around and having to always pay more, sometimes for less service,
I got more services for considerably less money.
Even the phone company or the cable company may bend over backwards for
a new customer. You were being romanced.
As an existing subscriber, you will soon learn that the honeymoon is
over.
Of course it isn't *always* that way in this country. Bell and its main
competitor Rogers used to be notorious for crappy service and
ever-increasing prices, just like American ISPs. But Bell at least seems
to have changed their attitude and is trying to win customers and keep
the ones they have. That's the way capitalism is *supposed* to work,
even if it doesn't always work out that way, especially in the
semi-monopolies like Internet and telecoms. (At least their
semi-monopolies in this country; in the US, not so much.)
Exactly.
Where I lived for close to twenty years, we had the bizarre experience
of being the first place in which the gas monopoly replaced underground utilities (my block was literally first) and the hookup to the meter,
but just about the last to get anything like home *DSL from the local
Bell telephone company.
Once there was competition, I routinely switched
back and forth between cable (I had an outdoor antenna and excellent
sight lines to the antenna array on top of Hancock (point at Hancock and
you also receive signals from Sears) and the Bell telephone company. At
one point, Bell gave me a new drop and did inside wiring work. My
apartment still had a screw terminal! I got them to put the DSL signal
on the unused pair in the two-pair inside wiring because my cordless phone interferred with the signal.
I lost satellite television via cable distribution but just didn't care.
When the phone company pissed me off, I went back to cable. There was
another point I switched back to phone, but they wouldn't give me back
the DSL as they had done an FTTN installation in the block but it wasn't
the full-sized node delivering satellite via FTTN.
I switched back to cable another time. I guess it was cable when I left.
It's been an interesting morning. My internet stopped working a couple
of hours ago. Initially, I thought I was having a technical problem but
it soon transpired that my account had been suspended due to non-payment
of the account.
My brother had always been in charge of paying the internet but he had a fatal car crash back in February and I hadn't quite got around to
getting the bills re-organized. I've always had a procrastination
problem and losing my brother seems to have made it worse. My
procrastination caught up with me this morning.
So I called the phone number for my ISP, Bell Canada, intending to
settle the bill and put the account in my name and carry on as usual.
But the rep I spoke to had a different plan: he set up a new account for
me, doubled my internet speed, bundled in some kind of TV package called
Fibe TV, lowered my bill by $50 or so, and locked the price in for two
years so they can't increase it. I also get a new modem; the installer
is coming by tomorrow to upgrade the wiring for the internet and give me
the new modem. All I have to do is take the old modem down to the
nearest Canada Post outlet and mail it back to Bell at no cost to me. (I
also need to configure the new modem but I'm not worried about that; I
have some technical skills and it's supposed to be dead easy even for
those without skills.)
I'm struck by the contrast between the quality of service I got vs. the "service" - which seems more like abuse - that I hear about when Adam or
anim have to deal with *their* internet providers. Instead of getting
jerked around and having to always pay more, sometimes for less service,
I got more services for considerably less money.
Of course it isn't *always* that way in this country. Bell and its main competitor Rogers used to be notorious for crappy service and
ever-increasing prices, just like American ISPs. But Bell at least seems
to have changed their attitude and is trying to win customers and keep
the ones they have. That's the way capitalism is *supposed* to work,
even if it doesn't always work out that way, especially in the semi-monopolies like Internet and telecoms. (At least their
semi-monopolies in this country; in the US, not so much.)
Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
It's been an interesting morning. My internet stopped working a couple
of hours ago. Initially, I thought I was having a technical problem but
it soon transpired that my account had been suspended due to non-payment
of the account.
My brother had always been in charge of paying the internet but he had a
fatal car crash back in February and I hadn't quite got around to
getting the bills re-organized. I've always had a procrastination
problem and losing my brother seems to have made it worse. My
procrastination caught up with me this morning.
So I called the phone number for my ISP, Bell Canada, intending to
settle the bill and put the account in my name and carry on as usual.
But the rep I spoke to had a different plan: he set up a new account for
me, doubled my internet speed, bundled in some kind of TV package called
Fibe TV, lowered my bill by $50 or so, and locked the price in for two
years so they can't increase it. I also get a new modem; the installer
is coming by tomorrow to upgrade the wiring for the internet and give me
the new modem. All I have to do is take the old modem down to the
nearest Canada Post outlet and mail it back to Bell at no cost to me. (I
also need to configure the new modem but I'm not worried about that; I
have some technical skills and it's supposed to be dead easy even for
those without skills.)
I'm struck by the contrast between the quality of service I got vs. the
"service" - which seems more like abuse - that I hear about when Adam or
anim have to deal with *their* internet providers. Instead of getting
jerked around and having to always pay more, sometimes for less service,
I got more services for considerably less money.
Of course it isn't *always* that way in this country. Bell and its main
competitor Rogers used to be notorious for crappy service and
ever-increasing prices, just like American ISPs. But Bell at least seems
to have changed their attitude and is trying to win customers and keep
the ones they have. That's the way capitalism is *supposed* to work,
even if it doesn't always work out that way, especially in the
semi-monopolies like Internet and telecoms. (At least their
semi-monopolies in this country; in the US, not so much.)
Condolences about your brother.
. . .
That *is* a bit surprising! When I did DSL support for Verizon, some of
our customers were in New York and New Jersey and they often had REALLY
old infrastructure, meaning telephone lines that had been installed in
the 1930s and never upgraded since. This often meant their DSL was
really crappy due to the ancient lines and switches. I had the
impression then that Verizon never upgraded anything more than they >absolutely had to. I felt sorry for the customers that were stuck in
that situation. I'm guessing that Verizon simply couldn't be bothered to >upgrade wires and switching stations because it would have been too >expensive; they were probably anticipating that newer technology, like
fiber optic, would eventually replace all that old copper wire based
service.
. . .
I haven't seen an outdoor antenna - or heard of anyone using one - in
this country in a REALLY long time, probably since the 70s. I knew one
woman who had been given a TV by her son but she couldn't afford cable
or satellite so she watched only the one local channel that she could
get. Then the station changed to a digital signal and she lost even
that, making her TV an over-sized paperweight....
. . .
One of my friends switched back and forth between Bell and Rogers
internet regularly for years; maybe she still does. Both services had
crappy quality, mostly because the wiring within her apartment building
was in really horrid shape and the owners wouldn't upgrade it and Bell
and Rogers couldn't or wouldn't. She arranged a number of service calls
but they always hit the problem with the buildings wiring and could
never get past that. But I guess the service was sufficiently passable
most of the time that it wasn't sufficiently bad to get them to move.
My brother had always been in charge of paying the internet but he had a >fatal car crash back in February and I hadn't quite got around to
getting the bills re-organized. . . .
Except for businesses with PBXs, we didn't use ISDN for residential.
It's too bad because the sound quality was superior to analog but the >technology was in wider-spread use in Europe and Japan than here.
You know what we are doing in this country? Telephone repair personnel
have been ordered to leave covers off pedestals. You see this all over
the place. The covers were designed to eliminate water infiltration. But
the network isn't deteriorating quickly enough to make the business case
to the regulators that it must be abandoned, so the telephone companies
are helping things along with self sabotage. It's outrateous.
Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
My brother had always been in charge of paying the internet but he had a
fatal car crash back in February and I hadn't quite got around to
getting the bills re-organized. . . .
I don't recall if I said something at the time you first mentioned the
death of your brother, but I'm very sorry to hear this. Best wishes to
you and your family.
In the other followup, I should have commented on the need to keep any
of your brother's phone numbers active, if that's still possible, or his email addresses. We all identify ourselves with phone numbers and email addresses on accounts we hold, making it super easy for someone who
learns of an old phone number or email address to commit fraud. To get
an account changed or re-established, the fraudster just needs one piece
of identifying information.
Since I subrscribe to VoIP.ms, based in Montreal, it's super cheap to
hold phone numbers. I have a six-line SIP conference phone plus a
business line on an ATA that does SIP and now, a fax line. I spend $75
to $100 a year but I have to provide the separate broadband connection.
Plus I've got a two-line ATA that I use for two Google voice lines, each
for a separate small nonprofit. There's the cable phone line and two
cell phones.
If I were keeping old phone numbers, I'd port them to a VoIP service.
Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
. . .
That *is* a bit surprising! When I did DSL support for Verizon, some of
our customers were in New York and New Jersey and they often had REALLY
old infrastructure, meaning telephone lines that had been installed in
the 1930s and never upgraded since. This often meant their DSL was
really crappy due to the ancient lines and switches. I had the
impression then that Verizon never upgraded anything more than they
absolutely had to. I felt sorry for the customers that were stuck in
that situation. I'm guessing that Verizon simply couldn't be bothered to
upgrade wires and switching stations because it would have been too
expensive; they were probably anticipating that newer technology, like
fiber optic, would eventually replace all that old copper wire based
service.
Public utlities in that part of the country were notorious for failure
to keep up with post WWII population increases. The old infrastructure
was truly high quality when first installed, but was never intended to
serve subsequent population growth.
I'm going to rant here. There is lots of bandwidth in a twisted-pair
(the twist mitigates against antenuation) copper pair. After all, PRI
ISDN used a single copper pair, 23 B channels and one D channel. It was
set up with evenly-divided channels, 64 Kbps each. A B channel could be
used for voice or data; the D channel was for signalling. In typical installations, it was either for voice or data. BRI ISDN was another
option. Genuine T1 was also done with a single copper pair.
Except for businesses with PBXs, we didn't use ISDN for residential.
It's too bad because the sound quality was superior to analog but the technology was in wider-spread use in Europe and Japan than here.
We would have had widespread residential data connection much earlier
with easier implementation and no voice modems. ISDN was switched
technology, which meant it used the telephone network AND the telephone network switch at the phone company central office. *DSL, which
attempted to use channels within the telephone lines without
interferring with the voice signal (sometimes unsuccessful without using
a separate pair), was unswitched. There was a separate piece of
equipment at the central office and, because signal distance was
limited, there had to be nodes set up in the field in order to serve the entire polygon wired to a particular central office.
Fiber optic was installed as a SEPARATE network because it got around regulatory rules that court decisions had forced wholesale rates onto
the monopoly telephone network so there could be competition for *DSL
from companies that couldn't possibly afford to build out their own
networks for the last mile connection. Most network interchange actually takes place at central offices.
Cable was almost always built out as a separate network based on coax. CableLABs has done amazing engineering over the years of squeezing out fantastic amounts of bandwidth from the concept of coax.
There's nothing wrong with old infrastructure
and, furthermore, there
never should have been separate copper and fiber-optic networks. Copper should have been replaced as needed.
You know what we are doing in this country? Telephone repair personnel
have been ordered to leave covers off pedestals. You see this all over
the place. The covers were designed to eliminate water infiltration. But
the network isn't deteriorating quickly enough to make the business case
to the regulators that it must be abandoned, so the telephone companies
are helping things along with self sabotage. It's outrateous.
. . .
I haven't seen an outdoor antenna - or heard of anyone using one - in
this country in a REALLY long time, probably since the 70s. I knew one
woman who had been given a TV by her son but she couldn't afford cable
or satellite so she watched only the one local channel that she could
get. Then the station changed to a digital signal and she lost even
that, making her TV an over-sized paperweight....
In the United States, the broadcast signal uses a significantly wider bandwidth than what's distributed by cable. I don't know how adequate broadcast is where you live.
I sure have never understood reluctance to
use an antenna if that's an option. Yes, I am aware of signals being
blocked by natural features and tall buildings.
. . .
One of my friends switched back and forth between Bell and Rogers
internet regularly for years; maybe she still does. Both services had
crappy quality, mostly because the wiring within her apartment building
was in really horrid shape and the owners wouldn't upgrade it and Bell
and Rogers couldn't or wouldn't. She arranged a number of service calls
but they always hit the problem with the buildings wiring and could
never get past that. But I guess the service was sufficiently passable
most of the time that it wasn't sufficiently bad to get them to move.
That was a regulatory issue in the United States to break the telephone monopoly. The neighborhood service line and the drop remained the
property of the phone company. The point of demarcation was the outside
wall of the building.
Inside the building, there can be multiple owners. If it's a
multi-tenant building, the building owns the wire, but the portion of
the wire unique to a tenant space belongs to the tenant. Who fixes what
is a game of finger-pointing.
I supervised the telephone installation in the last office the School
had. We could only get *DSL from the phone company. Cable hadn't lit lit
the building
and we were required to sign CONTRACTS with the cable
company for them to survey, before deciding to light the block, even
though they had no intention of lighting the block for years.
No
contract? They wouldn't conduct a site survey. Since they had no
intention of providing service, what the hell was I signing a contract
for?
The phone company scheduled a four-hour appointment for us, which I
couldn't understand. Well, soon, I found out. It took hours for him to
find the copper pair in the office. Nothing in the wiring closet was adequately labeled.
I pointed to an outlet but it turned out that that
outlet was merely daisy chained from another part of the office. We
moved furniture and boxes and finally spotted another outlet that was
also the terminating point of the copper pair. With a buzzer, he
identified it at the wiring closet and then connected it to an unused
pair in the building wiring. Fortunately no new wiring was needed but
the time it took to identify the wiring path was the reason the
appointment window was so long.
Before the installer arrived, someone in the back office called me all concerned that the wrong suite number was on the account's service
address. I told him that I didn't want to deal with it before
installation for fear that they'd disconnect the circuit that had to be
live during installation. They assured me that it wouldn't be. They
lied. Fortunately, the installer knew whom to call to get it turned back
on. The circuit merely had to be live to the building's basement.
Everything else was just making physical connections within the
building.
That was quite painful.
Even though we moved a block away, we crossed a magic boundary and
couldn't keep the old phone number.
The office admnistrator wanted
magicJack and failed to follow through with them to get the old phone
number ported (which could have happened prior to its disconnection at
the previous office). So the temporary phone number magicJack gave us
was our permanent phone number for five years.
magicJack was a terrible company. It was incredibly difficult finding
anybody who understood what they had to do on their end for networking.
I ended up getting the old phone number restored and then porting it to
a new service, then porting out the "temporary" magicJack number to a
new service after an incredibly painful process that required to file
a complaint with FCC. In the meantime, because magicJack had failed to
mark the number as ported out, they assigned it to a new subscriber who
found he couldn't receive any phone calls! That took a great deal of correspondence to fix as well.
Adam wrote:
- antennas can be lightning magnets which is a real issue if it's
mounted on your roof
I supervised the telephone installation in the last office the School
had. We could only get *DSL from the phone company. Cable hadn't lit lit >>the building
Somethings tells me you meant to use a different verb since cable
doesn't involve lighting....
and we were required to sign CONTRACTS with the cable
company for them to survey, before deciding to light the block, even
though they had no intention of lighting the block for years.
Wait, maybe you did mean "lit"! I've just never heard that verb used in
the context of cable before....
No
contract? They wouldn't conduct a site survey. Since they had no
intention of providing service, what the hell was I signing a contract
for?
Good point.
The phone company scheduled a four-hour appointment for us, which I >>couldn't understand. Well, soon, I found out. It took hours for him to
find the copper pair in the office. Nothing in the wiring closet was >>adequately labeled.
Labelling is one of my pet peeves, even with my own house. (I'm
gradually sticking labels on every switch and outlet to indicate what
circuit breaker it is on so that I can turn off ONLY the correct breaker
the next time I want to work on that switch or receptacle.)
I pointed to an outlet but it turned out that that
outlet was merely daisy chained from another part of the office. We
moved furniture and boxes and finally spotted another outlet that was
also the terminating point of the copper pair. With a buzzer, he
identified it at the wiring closet and then connected it to an unused
pair in the building wiring. Fortunately no new wiring was needed but
the time it took to identify the wiring path was the reason the
appointment window was so long.
I don't envy the installers. I'm sure most people underestimate the
amount of work they'll have to do. I have a 4 hour window for my
installation tomorrow and the email says they'll need three hours, even >though I'm already wired for fibre and the connection works fine. I'm >guessing they'll upgrade the little boxes they've got but whether they
need to do that to get me my new speed, I really don't know.
I'm a little surprised they don't let the installer take the old modem
with him but that's apparently against policy so I have to take it down
to the post office and mail it from there using a special code to get
free postage. Seems like extra work on their part with no obvious
benefit to them....
Before the installer arrived, someone in the back office called me all >>concerned that the wrong suite number was on the account's service
address. I told him that I didn't want to deal with it before
installation for fear that they'd disconnect the circuit that had to be >>live during installation. They assured me that it wouldn't be. They
lied. Fortunately, the installer knew whom to call to get it turned back >>on. The circuit merely had to be live to the building's basement. >>Everything else was just making physical connections within the
building.
That was quite painful.
It certainly sounds like it!
Even though we moved a block away, we crossed a magic boundary and
couldn't keep the old phone number.
By contrast, my mother didn't move at all and STILL had to give up her
old phone number. Apparently Bell was taking that exchange out of
service - it was the oldest in town - so she had to get a new number.
Luckily, she didn't care and it didn't mess her up at all. I don't know
what they did about businesses on that exchange; some of them must have
had major objections to their numbers changing due to the costs of
changing signage, advertising, business cards, etc....
The office admnistrator wanted
magicJack and failed to follow through with them to get the old phone >>number ported (which could have happened prior to its disconnection at
the previous office). So the temporary phone number magicJack gave us
was our permanent phone number for five years.
magicJack was a terrible company. It was incredibly difficult finding >>anybody who understood what they had to do on their end for networking.
I ended up getting the old phone number restored and then porting it to
a new service, then porting out the "temporary" magicJack number to a
new service after an incredibly painful process that required to file
a complaint with FCC. In the meantime, because magicJack had failed to
mark the number as ported out, they assigned it to a new subscriber who >>found he couldn't receive any phone calls! That took a great deal of >>correspondence to fix as well.
Sounds like a nightmare!
On 2025-05-22 4:50 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:Thank you! Actually, this is the first time I've mentioned it on the newsgroup.
My brother had always been in charge of paying the internet but he had a >>> fatal car crash back in February and I hadn't quite got around to
getting the bills re-organized. . . .
I don't recall if I said something at the time you first mentioned the
death of your brother, but I'm very sorry to hear this. Best wishes to
you and your family.
In the other followup, I should have commented on the need to keep anyActually, I let his cell number lapse a few weeks back. I couldn't see
of your brother's phone numbers active, if that's still possible, or his
email addresses. We all identify ourselves with phone numbers and email
addresses on accounts we hold, making it super easy for someone who
learns of an old phone number or email address to commit fraud. To get
an account changed or re-established, the fraudster just needs one piece
of identifying information.
any point in keeping it alive.
without any difficulty. I still know what the number was when people ask
as I change over other services.
Since I subrscribe to VoIP.ms, based in Montreal, it's super cheap to
hold phone numbers. I have a six-line SIP conference phone plus a
business line on an ATA that does SIP and now, a fax line. I spend $75
to $100 a year but I have to provide the separate broadband connection.
Plus I've got a two-line ATA that I use for two Google voice lines, each
for a separate small nonprofit. There's the cable phone line and two
cell phones.
If I were keeping old phone numbers, I'd port them to a VoIP service.
Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
On 2025-05-22 4:50 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:Thank you! Actually, this is the first time I've mentioned it on the
My brother had always been in charge of paying the internet but he had a >>>> fatal car crash back in February and I hadn't quite got around to
getting the bills re-organized. . . .
I don't recall if I said something at the time you first mentioned the
death of your brother, but I'm very sorry to hear this. Best wishes to
you and your family.
newsgroup.
In the other followup, I should have commented on the need to keep anyActually, I let his cell number lapse a few weeks back. I couldn't see
of your brother's phone numbers active, if that's still possible, or his >>> email addresses. We all identify ourselves with phone numbers and email
addresses on accounts we hold, making it super easy for someone who
learns of an old phone number or email address to commit fraud. To get
an account changed or re-established, the fraudster just needs one piece >>> of identifying information.
any point in keeping it alive.
I thought about keeping Mom‘s number when I sold her house, but she’d been
gone several years at that point and she outlived most of her friends so I decided nobody would be trying to contact me that way. I did keep my business line, but let my fax number go away.
I did my business with Bell this morning
without any difficulty. I still know what the number was when people ask
as I change over other services.
Since I subrscribe to VoIP.ms, based in Montreal, it's super cheap to
hold phone numbers. I have a six-line SIP conference phone plus a
business line on an ATA that does SIP and now, a fax line. I spend $75
to $100 a year but I have to provide the separate broadband connection.
Plus I've got a two-line ATA that I use for two Google voice lines, each >>> for a separate small nonprofit. There's the cable phone line and two
cell phones.
If I were keeping old phone numbers, I'd port them to a VoIP service.
On 2025-05-22 4:39 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:It's far from the first time that something that was intended to work
. . .
That *is* a bit surprising! When I did DSL support for Verizon, some of
our customers were in New York and New Jersey and they often had REALLY
old infrastructure, meaning telephone lines that had been installed in
the 1930s and never upgraded since. This often meant their DSL was
really crappy due to the ancient lines and switches. I had the
impression then that Verizon never upgraded anything more than they
absolutely had to. I felt sorry for the customers that were stuck in
that situation. I'm guessing that Verizon simply couldn't be bothered to >>> upgrade wires and switching stations because it would have been too
expensive; they were probably anticipating that newer technology, like
fiber optic, would eventually replace all that old copper wire based
service.
Public utlities in that part of the country were notorious for failure
to keep up with post WWII population increases. The old infrastructure
was truly high quality when first installed, but was never intended to
serve subsequent population growth.
for x years was used for MUCH longer than intended without spending
money on maintenance....
I shudder to think how many roads and bridges we have that are past
their best before date.
We have an especially bad problem with that in
our country's military. We've been running helicopters from the 1950s
for decades past their intended life;
I *think* they are gradually
getting replaced but I'm not positive. We recently agreed to replace the >pistols that were available to our soldiers: they were made in the
1930s!! The need for newer pistols was blindingly obvious a LONG time
ago but our government (regardless of which party was in power) ALWAYS
finds money for the military last (if they find money at all). Our
current jet fighters are F-18s which are 40 years old and they're being
held together (figuratively) with spit and bailer twine. The
Conservatives, when they were last in power, agreed to buy a bunch of
F-35s but as soon as the Liberals got in, they decided to revisit the >decision, then spend almost 10 fucking years hemming and hawing before >finally deciding to buy F-35s anyway. Now Carney is talking about
pausing that order after all and going with a European fighter, just
because Trump. (We've committed to buying a handful of F-35s but they're >talking about taking the rest of the order away from the US and giving
it to the Eurofighter people which would be extra, extra stupid because
then we'd have a handful of F-35s and then a bunch of the Eurofighters >causing all kinds of complications in terms of basing, maintenance,
training, etc. etc. But the Liberals are nothing if not stupid so I'm
ready for anything.) But I digress....
I'm going to rant here. There is lots of bandwidth in a twisted-pairOne of my friends built a house back when the internet was in its
(the twist mitigates against antenuation) copper pair. After all, PRI
ISDN used a single copper pair, 23 B channels and one D channel. It was
set up with evenly-divided channels, 64 Kbps each. A B channel could be
used for voice or data; the D channel was for signalling. In typical
installations, it was either for voice or data. BRI ISDN was another
option. Genuine T1 was also done with a single copper pair.
Except for businesses with PBXs, we didn't use ISDN for residential.
It's too bad because the sound quality was superior to analog but the
technology was in wider-spread use in Europe and Japan than here.
We would have had widespread residential data connection much earlier
with easier implementation and no voice modems. ISDN was switched
technology, which meant it used the telephone network AND the telephone
network switch at the phone company central office. *DSL, which
attempted to use channels within the telephone lines without
interferring with the voice signal (sometimes unsuccessful without using
a separate pair), was unswitched. There was a separate piece of
equipment at the central office and, because signal distance was
limited, there had to be nodes set up in the field in order to serve the
entire polygon wired to a particular central office.
infancy and he installed ISDN. But I seem to recall that when he showed
it to me, it was rather limited in speed to 128 MB, only twice as fast
as the typical dialup modem in those days. If that's the best you can do
with ISDN - and perhaps it's not - I'm underwhelmed even if it has other >strengths.
Fiber optic was installed as a SEPARATE network because it got aroundThere's a claim - I suspect it's a myth but I could be wrong - that
regulatory rules that court decisions had forced wholesale rates onto
the monopoly telephone network so there could be competition for *DSL
from companies that couldn't possibly afford to build out their own
networks for the last mile connection. Most network interchange actually
takes place at central offices.
every street in this country has fibre optic cable down the middle. More >likely, every new street constructed after a certain point in time -
probably in the 1970s - has fibre as a matter of course. I don't see
them ripping up every existing street across this vast country to
install fibre.
Cable was almost always built out as a separate network based on coax.I remember going to a friend's place when most people (including me)
CableLABs has done amazing engineering over the years of squeezing out
fantastic amounts of bandwidth from the concept of coax.
still had dialup modems. He had a cable modem and was getting 1 GB of
speed; he could download a huge file in a couple of minutes. Meanwhile,
I had to download updates to my compiler, put them on floppy disk, and
the files were so numerous that I had to spend an entire weekend (48
hours) downloading the damned things on my dialup modem. That really
opened my eyes to the capabilities of cable modems. But, in those early
days, I also learned that if you had a cable modem, you shared your
bandwidth with your whole neighbourhood; when you tried to download in
prime time (after everyone was home for work and before bedtime) speeds >dropped back down to almost dialup speeds. I know they've done a lot to
get around those initial issues though; when I had a cable modem about
10 years back, I got very decent speed and didn't find it slowing down
in prime time.
There's nothing wrong with old infrastructure
Then why were there so many problems in New York and New Jersey?
and, furthermore, there
never should have been separate copper and fiber-optic networks. Copper
should have been replaced as needed.
You know what we are doing in this country? Telephone repair personnelI've seen that here too and was puzzled by it. It never occurred to me
have been ordered to leave covers off pedestals. You see this all over
the place. The covers were designed to eliminate water infiltration. But
the network isn't deteriorating quickly enough to make the business case
to the regulators that it must be abandoned, so the telephone companies
are helping things along with self sabotage. It's outrateous.
that it was a deliberate act by the telcos. That is some shameful shit!
. . .
I haven't seen an outdoor antenna - or heard of anyone using one - in
this country in a REALLY long time, probably since the 70s. I knew one
woman who had been given a TV by her son but she couldn't afford cable
or satellite so she watched only the one local channel that she could
get. Then the station changed to a digital signal and she lost even
that, making her TV an over-sized paperweight....
In the United States, the broadcast signal uses a significantly wider
bandwidth than what's distributed by cable. I don't know how adequate
broadcast is where you live.
I truly don't know. We certainly don't have nearly as many TV stations
as you do! It's quite common for major cities there to have all kinds of >stations serving them. Here, many cities in our top 20 cities limped
along with a single station for many many years and the station from the
next major city was often poor if you could get it at all. I think
that's why we invented cable TV - or so we claim - and why that shaped
our broadcasting for a long time. Even today, my home town still has
only 1 TV station but with cable or satellite, you can get a lot more.
When I was a kid, before we got cable, we could only get our local
channel and the Hamilton channel reliably; the London channel was hit or
miss and we couldn't get the Toronto channel except perhaps in rare >circumstances.
I sure have never understood reluctance to
use an antenna if that's an option. Yes, I am aware of signals being
blocked by natural features and tall buildings.
I can think of a few issues with antennas:
- they can be a challenge to mount if you do it yourself
- if you get a tower for your antenna, it can be pretty expensive
- antennas can be lightning magnets which is a real issue if it's
mounted on your roof
That's what happened to my friend, time and time again.. . .
One of my friends switched back and forth between Bell and Rogers
internet regularly for years; maybe she still does. Both services had
crappy quality, mostly because the wiring within her apartment building
was in really horrid shape and the owners wouldn't upgrade it and Bell
and Rogers couldn't or wouldn't. She arranged a number of service calls
but they always hit the problem with the buildings wiring and could
never get past that. But I guess the service was sufficiently passable
most of the time that it wasn't sufficiently bad to get them to move.
That was a regulatory issue in the United States to break the telephone
monopoly. The neighborhood service line and the drop remained the
property of the phone company. The point of demarcation was the outside
wall of the building.
Inside the building, there can be multiple owners. If it's a
multi-tenant building, the building owns the wire, but the portion of
the wire unique to a tenant space belongs to the tenant. Who fixes what
is a game of finger-pointing.
I supervised the telephone installation in the last office the School
had. We could only get *DSL from the phone company. Cable hadn't lit lit
the building
Somethings tells me you meant to use a different verb since cable
doesn't involve lighting....
and we were required to sign CONTRACTS with the cable
company for them to survey, before deciding to light the block, even
though they had no intention of lighting the block for years.
Wait, maybe you did mean "lit"! I've just never heard that verb used in
the context of cable before....
NoGood point.
contract? They wouldn't conduct a site survey. Since they had no
intention of providing service, what the hell was I signing a contract
for?
The phone company scheduled a four-hour appointment for us, which I
couldn't understand. Well, soon, I found out. It took hours for him to
find the copper pair in the office. Nothing in the wiring closet was
adequately labeled.
Labelling is one of my pet peeves, even with my own house. (I'm
gradually sticking labels on every switch and outlet to indicate what
circuit breaker it is on so that I can turn off ONLY the correct breaker
the next time I want to work on that switch or receptacle.)
I pointed to an outlet but it turned out that thatI don't envy the installers. I'm sure most people underestimate the
outlet was merely daisy chained from another part of the office. We
moved furniture and boxes and finally spotted another outlet that was
also the terminating point of the copper pair. With a buzzer, he
identified it at the wiring closet and then connected it to an unused
pair in the building wiring. Fortunately no new wiring was needed but
the time it took to identify the wiring path was the reason the
appointment window was so long.
amount of work they'll have to do. I have a 4 hour window for my
installation tomorrow and the email says they'll need three hours, even >though I'm already wired for fibre and the connection works fine. I'm >guessing they'll upgrade the little boxes they've got but whether they
need to do that to get me my new speed, I really don't know.
I'm a little surprised they don't let the installer take the old modem
with him but that's apparently against policy so I have to take it down
to the post office and mail it from there using a special code to get
free postage. Seems like extra work on their part with no obvious
benefit to them....
Before the installer arrived, someone in the back office called me allIt certainly sounds like it!
concerned that the wrong suite number was on the account's service
address. I told him that I didn't want to deal with it before
installation for fear that they'd disconnect the circuit that had to be
live during installation. They assured me that it wouldn't be. They
lied. Fortunately, the installer knew whom to call to get it turned back
on. The circuit merely had to be live to the building's basement.
Everything else was just making physical connections within the
building.
That was quite painful.
Even though we moved a block away, we crossed a magic boundary and
couldn't keep the old phone number.
By contrast, my mother didn't move at all and STILL had to give up her
old phone number. Apparently Bell was taking that exchange out of
service - it was the oldest in town - so she had to get a new number. >Luckily, she didn't care and it didn't mess her up at all. I don't know
what they did about businesses on that exchange; some of them must have
had major objections to their numbers changing due to the costs of
changing signage, advertising, business cards, etc....
The office admnistrator wanted
magicJack and failed to follow through with them to get the old phone
number ported (which could have happened prior to its disconnection at
the previous office). So the temporary phone number magicJack gave us
was our permanent phone number for five years.
magicJack was a terrible company. It was incredibly difficult finding
anybody who understood what they had to do on their end for networking.
I ended up getting the old phone number restored and then porting it to
a new service, then porting out the "temporary" magicJack number to a
new service after an incredibly painful process that required to file
a complaint with FCC. In the meantime, because magicJack had failed to
mark the number as ported out, they assigned it to a new subscriber who
found he couldn't receive any phone calls! That took a great deal of
correspondence to fix as well.
Sounds like a nightmare!
On Thu, 22 May 2025 18:31:29 -0400, Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
I *think* they are gradually
getting replaced but I'm not positive. We recently agreed to replace the
pistols that were available to our soldiers: they were made in the
1930s!! The need for newer pistols was blindingly obvious a LONG time
ago but our government (regardless of which party was in power) ALWAYS
finds money for the military last (if they find money at all). Our
current jet fighters are F-18s which are 40 years old and they're being
held together (figuratively) with spit and bailer twine. The
Conservatives, when they were last in power, agreed to buy a bunch of
F-35s but as soon as the Liberals got in, they decided to revisit the
decision, then spend almost 10 fucking years hemming and hawing before
finally deciding to buy F-35s anyway. Now Carney is talking about
pausing that order after all and going with a European fighter, just
because Trump. (We've committed to buying a handful of F-35s but they're
talking about taking the rest of the order away from the US and giving
it to the Eurofighter people which would be extra, extra stupid because
then we'd have a handful of F-35s and then a bunch of the Eurofighters
causing all kinds of complications in terms of basing, maintenance,
training, etc. etc. But the Liberals are nothing if not stupid so I'm
ready for anything.) But I digress....
I think you fail to see the obvious answer. If your country were truly
to move away from the F-35 then there's no reason to keep them. Just
sell them to another country that is using the fighters. I'm sure
there will be many willing buyers.
May 22, 2025 at 5:26:23 PM PDT, shawn <nanoflower@notforg.m.a.i.l.com>:
Thu, 22 May 2025 18:31:29 -0400, Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com>:
I *think* they are gradually
getting replaced but I'm not positive. We recently agreed to replace the >>>pistols that were available to our soldiers: they were made in the >>>1930s!! The need for newer pistols was blindingly obvious a LONG time
ago but our government (regardless of which party was in power) ALWAYS >>>finds money for the military last (if they find money at all). Our >>>current jet fighters are F-18s which are 40 years old and they're being >>>held together (figuratively) with spit and bailer twine. The >>>Conservatives, when they were last in power, agreed to buy a bunch of >>>F-35s but as soon as the Liberals got in, they decided to revisit the >>>decision, then spend almost 10 fucking years hemming and hawing before >>>finally deciding to buy F-35s anyway. Now Carney is talking about
pausing that order after all and going with a European fighter, just >>>because Trump. (We've committed to buying a handful of F-35s but they're >>>talking about taking the rest of the order away from the US and giving
it to the Eurofighter people which would be extra, extra stupid because >>>then we'd have a handful of F-35s and then a bunch of the Eurofighters >>>causing all kinds of complications in terms of basing, maintenance, >>>training, etc. etc. But the Liberals are nothing if not stupid so I'm >>>ready for anything.) But I digress....
I think you fail to see the obvious answer. If your country were truly
to move away from the F-35 then there's no reason to keep them. Just
sell them to another country that is using the fighters. I'm sure
there will be many willing buyers.
Weapons sales tend to come with a "you can't sell this stuff to anyone else" >clause in the contract. We only want those things going to certain countries.
Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
Adam wrote:
- antennas can be lightning magnets which is a real issue if it's
mounted on your roof
Every wire entering the house must be grounded. And yes, you might want
to run it through a surge protector.
I supervised the telephone installation in the last office the School
had. We could only get *DSL from the phone company. Cable hadn't lit lit >>> the building
Somethings tells me you meant to use a different verb since cable
doesn't involve lighting....
That's what they called an installation on the block that any building
could be hooked up to.
and we were required to sign CONTRACTS with the cable
company for them to survey, before deciding to light the block, even
though they had no intention of lighting the block for years.
Wait, maybe you did mean "lit"! I've just never heard that verb used in
the context of cable before....
No
contract? They wouldn't conduct a site survey. Since they had no
intention of providing service, what the hell was I signing a contract
for?
Good point.
The phone company scheduled a four-hour appointment for us, which I
couldn't understand. Well, soon, I found out. It took hours for him to
find the copper pair in the office. Nothing in the wiring closet was
adequately labeled.
Labelling is one of my pet peeves, even with my own house. (I'm
gradually sticking labels on every switch and outlet to indicate what
circuit breaker it is on so that I can turn off ONLY the correct breaker
the next time I want to work on that switch or receptacle.)
I pointed to an outlet but it turned out that that
outlet was merely daisy chained from another part of the office. We
moved furniture and boxes and finally spotted another outlet that was
also the terminating point of the copper pair. With a buzzer, he
identified it at the wiring closet and then connected it to an unused
pair in the building wiring. Fortunately no new wiring was needed but
the time it took to identify the wiring path was the reason the
appointment window was so long.
I don't envy the installers. I'm sure most people underestimate the
amount of work they'll have to do. I have a 4 hour window for my
installation tomorrow and the email says they'll need three hours, even
though I'm already wired for fibre and the connection works fine. I'm
guessing they'll upgrade the little boxes they've got but whether they
need to do that to get me my new speed, I really don't know.
I'm a little surprised they don't let the installer take the old modem
with him but that's apparently against policy so I have to take it down
to the post office and mail it from there using a special code to get
free postage. Seems like extra work on their part with no obvious
benefit to them....
It's being returned to a different inventory than the one the installers
draw from.
Before the installer arrived, someone in the back office called me all
concerned that the wrong suite number was on the account's service
address. I told him that I didn't want to deal with it before
installation for fear that they'd disconnect the circuit that had to be
live during installation. They assured me that it wouldn't be. They
lied. Fortunately, the installer knew whom to call to get it turned back >>> on. The circuit merely had to be live to the building's basement.
Everything else was just making physical connections within the
building.
That was quite painful.
It certainly sounds like it!
Even though we moved a block away, we crossed a magic boundary and
couldn't keep the old phone number.
By contrast, my mother didn't move at all and STILL had to give up her
old phone number. Apparently Bell was taking that exchange out of
service - it was the oldest in town - so she had to get a new number.
That's a weird scenario.
Luckily, she didn't care and it didn't mess her up at all. I don't know
what they did about businesses on that exchange; some of them must have
had major objections to their numbers changing due to the costs of
changing signage, advertising, business cards, etc....
The office admnistrator wanted
magicJack and failed to follow through with them to get the old phone
number ported (which could have happened prior to its disconnection at
the previous office). So the temporary phone number magicJack gave us
was our permanent phone number for five years.
magicJack was a terrible company. It was incredibly difficult finding
anybody who understood what they had to do on their end for networking.
I ended up getting the old phone number restored and then porting it to
a new service, then porting out the "temporary" magicJack number to a
new service after an incredibly painful process that required to file
a complaint with FCC. In the meantime, because magicJack had failed to
mark the number as ported out, they assigned it to a new subscriber who
found he couldn't receive any phone calls! That took a great deal of
correspondence to fix as well.
Sounds like a nightmare!
I didn't mean to bring you down.
Enjoy your excellent subscriber service
while you can!
On Thu, 22 May 2025 18:31:29 -0400, Rhino
<no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
On 2025-05-22 4:39 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:It's far from the first time that something that was intended to work
. . .
That *is* a bit surprising! When I did DSL support for Verizon, some of >>>> our customers were in New York and New Jersey and they often had REALLY >>>> old infrastructure, meaning telephone lines that had been installed in >>>> the 1930s and never upgraded since. This often meant their DSL was
really crappy due to the ancient lines and switches. I had the
impression then that Verizon never upgraded anything more than they
absolutely had to. I felt sorry for the customers that were stuck in
that situation. I'm guessing that Verizon simply couldn't be bothered to >>>> upgrade wires and switching stations because it would have been too
expensive; they were probably anticipating that newer technology, like >>>> fiber optic, would eventually replace all that old copper wire based
service.
Public utlities in that part of the country were notorious for failure
to keep up with post WWII population increases. The old infrastructure
was truly high quality when first installed, but was never intended to
serve subsequent population growth.
for x years was used for MUCH longer than intended without spending
money on maintenance....
I shudder to think how many roads and bridges we have that are past
their best before date.
We have the same problem with bridges and utilities.
We have an especially bad problem with that in
our country's military. We've been running helicopters from the 1950s
for decades past their intended life;
We tend to not have that problem. Mostly because we sell/give away the
older equipment and replace it with newer gear.
I *think* they are gradually
getting replaced but I'm not positive. We recently agreed to replace the
pistols that were available to our soldiers: they were made in the
1930s!! The need for newer pistols was blindingly obvious a LONG time
ago but our government (regardless of which party was in power) ALWAYS
finds money for the military last (if they find money at all). Our
current jet fighters are F-18s which are 40 years old and they're being
held together (figuratively) with spit and bailer twine. The
Conservatives, when they were last in power, agreed to buy a bunch of
F-35s but as soon as the Liberals got in, they decided to revisit the
decision, then spend almost 10 fucking years hemming and hawing before
finally deciding to buy F-35s anyway. Now Carney is talking about
pausing that order after all and going with a European fighter, just
because Trump. (We've committed to buying a handful of F-35s but they're
talking about taking the rest of the order away from the US and giving
it to the Eurofighter people which would be extra, extra stupid because
then we'd have a handful of F-35s and then a bunch of the Eurofighters
causing all kinds of complications in terms of basing, maintenance,
training, etc. etc. But the Liberals are nothing if not stupid so I'm
ready for anything.) But I digress....
I think you fail to see the obvious answer. If your country were truly
to move away from the F-35 then there's no reason to keep them. Just
sell them to another country that is using the fighters. I'm sure
there will be many willing buyers.
I'm going to rant here. There is lots of bandwidth in a twisted-pairOne of my friends built a house back when the internet was in its
(the twist mitigates against antenuation) copper pair. After all, PRI
ISDN used a single copper pair, 23 B channels and one D channel. It was
set up with evenly-divided channels, 64 Kbps each. A B channel could be
used for voice or data; the D channel was for signalling. In typical
installations, it was either for voice or data. BRI ISDN was another
option. Genuine T1 was also done with a single copper pair.
Except for businesses with PBXs, we didn't use ISDN for residential.
It's too bad because the sound quality was superior to analog but the
technology was in wider-spread use in Europe and Japan than here.
We would have had widespread residential data connection much earlier
with easier implementation and no voice modems. ISDN was switched
technology, which meant it used the telephone network AND the telephone
network switch at the phone company central office. *DSL, which
attempted to use channels within the telephone lines without
interferring with the voice signal (sometimes unsuccessful without using >>> a separate pair), was unswitched. There was a separate piece of
equipment at the central office and, because signal distance was
limited, there had to be nodes set up in the field in order to serve the >>> entire polygon wired to a particular central office.
infancy and he installed ISDN. But I seem to recall that when he showed
it to me, it was rather limited in speed to 128 MB, only twice as fast
as the typical dialup modem in those days. If that's the best you can do
with ISDN - and perhaps it's not - I'm underwhelmed even if it has other
strengths.
Fiber optic was installed as a SEPARATE network because it got aroundThere's a claim - I suspect it's a myth but I could be wrong - that
regulatory rules that court decisions had forced wholesale rates onto
the monopoly telephone network so there could be competition for *DSL
from companies that couldn't possibly afford to build out their own
networks for the last mile connection. Most network interchange actually >>> takes place at central offices.
every street in this country has fibre optic cable down the middle. More
likely, every new street constructed after a certain point in time -
probably in the 1970s - has fibre as a matter of course. I don't see
them ripping up every existing street across this vast country to
install fibre.
Cable was almost always built out as a separate network based on coax.I remember going to a friend's place when most people (including me)
CableLABs has done amazing engineering over the years of squeezing out
fantastic amounts of bandwidth from the concept of coax.
still had dialup modems. He had a cable modem and was getting 1 GB of
speed; he could download a huge file in a couple of minutes. Meanwhile,
I had to download updates to my compiler, put them on floppy disk, and
the files were so numerous that I had to spend an entire weekend (48
hours) downloading the damned things on my dialup modem. That really
opened my eyes to the capabilities of cable modems. But, in those early
days, I also learned that if you had a cable modem, you shared your
bandwidth with your whole neighbourhood; when you tried to download in
prime time (after everyone was home for work and before bedtime) speeds
dropped back down to almost dialup speeds. I know they've done a lot to
get around those initial issues though; when I had a cable modem about
10 years back, I got very decent speed and didn't find it slowing down
in prime time.
There's nothing wrong with old infrastructure
Then why were there so many problems in New York and New Jersey?
and, furthermore, thereI've seen that here too and was puzzled by it. It never occurred to me
never should have been separate copper and fiber-optic networks. Copper
should have been replaced as needed.
You know what we are doing in this country? Telephone repair personnel
have been ordered to leave covers off pedestals. You see this all over
the place. The covers were designed to eliminate water infiltration. But >>> the network isn't deteriorating quickly enough to make the business case >>> to the regulators that it must be abandoned, so the telephone companies
are helping things along with self sabotage. It's outrateous.
that it was a deliberate act by the telcos. That is some shameful shit!
. . .
I haven't seen an outdoor antenna - or heard of anyone using one - in
this country in a REALLY long time, probably since the 70s. I knew one >>>> woman who had been given a TV by her son but she couldn't afford cable >>>> or satellite so she watched only the one local channel that she could
get. Then the station changed to a digital signal and she lost even
that, making her TV an over-sized paperweight....
In the United States, the broadcast signal uses a significantly wider
bandwidth than what's distributed by cable. I don't know how adequate
broadcast is where you live.
I truly don't know. We certainly don't have nearly as many TV stations
as you do! It's quite common for major cities there to have all kinds of
stations serving them. Here, many cities in our top 20 cities limped
along with a single station for many many years and the station from the
next major city was often poor if you could get it at all. I think
that's why we invented cable TV - or so we claim - and why that shaped
our broadcasting for a long time. Even today, my home town still has
only 1 TV station but with cable or satellite, you can get a lot more.
When I was a kid, before we got cable, we could only get our local
channel and the Hamilton channel reliably; the London channel was hit or
miss and we couldn't get the Toronto channel except perhaps in rare
circumstances.
I have about 69 channels that I get with my antenna and another 20 or
so I could get if I set up an outdoor antenna. It helps being near a
large city (Atlanta).
Whoa.. I just did an automated search for new channels. Haven't done
one in a year or so and it came up with 90 channels. Not all will come
in with a strong enough signal with my current indoor setup, but it
works. I mostly use it as a backup for when the cable goes out.
I sure have never understood reluctance to
use an antenna if that's an option. Yes, I am aware of signals being
blocked by natural features and tall buildings.
I can think of a few issues with antennas:
- they can be a challenge to mount if you do it yourself
- if you get a tower for your antenna, it can be pretty expensive
- antennas can be lightning magnets which is a real issue if it's
mounted on your roof
Depending upon your location you can do perfectly well with an indoor antenna.
That's what happened to my friend, time and time again.. . .
One of my friends switched back and forth between Bell and Rogers
internet regularly for years; maybe she still does. Both services had
crappy quality, mostly because the wiring within her apartment building >>>> was in really horrid shape and the owners wouldn't upgrade it and Bell >>>> and Rogers couldn't or wouldn't. She arranged a number of service calls >>>> but they always hit the problem with the buildings wiring and could
never get past that. But I guess the service was sufficiently passable >>>> most of the time that it wasn't sufficiently bad to get them to move.
That was a regulatory issue in the United States to break the telephone
monopoly. The neighborhood service line and the drop remained the
property of the phone company. The point of demarcation was the outside
wall of the building.
Inside the building, there can be multiple owners. If it's a
multi-tenant building, the building owns the wire, but the portion of
the wire unique to a tenant space belongs to the tenant. Who fixes what
is a game of finger-pointing.
I supervised the telephone installation in the last office the School
had. We could only get *DSL from the phone company. Cable hadn't lit lit >>> the building
Somethings tells me you meant to use a different verb since cable
doesn't involve lighting....
The term "lit" in this case just means activating the cable and
getting the setup working.
and we were required to sign CONTRACTS with the cable
company for them to survey, before deciding to light the block, even
though they had no intention of lighting the block for years.
Wait, maybe you did mean "lit"! I've just never heard that verb used in
the context of cable before....
Yep, it's a common use but only within the industry.
NoGood point.
contract? They wouldn't conduct a site survey. Since they had no
intention of providing service, what the hell was I signing a contract
for?
The phone company scheduled a four-hour appointment for us, which I
couldn't understand. Well, soon, I found out. It took hours for him to
find the copper pair in the office. Nothing in the wiring closet was
adequately labeled.
Labelling is one of my pet peeves, even with my own house. (I'm
gradually sticking labels on every switch and outlet to indicate what
circuit breaker it is on so that I can turn off ONLY the correct breaker
the next time I want to work on that switch or receptacle.)
I pointed to an outlet but it turned out that thatI don't envy the installers. I'm sure most people underestimate the
outlet was merely daisy chained from another part of the office. We
moved furniture and boxes and finally spotted another outlet that was
also the terminating point of the copper pair. With a buzzer, he
identified it at the wiring closet and then connected it to an unused
pair in the building wiring. Fortunately no new wiring was needed but
the time it took to identify the wiring path was the reason the
appointment window was so long.
amount of work they'll have to do. I have a 4 hour window for my
installation tomorrow and the email says they'll need three hours, even
though I'm already wired for fibre and the connection works fine. I'm
guessing they'll upgrade the little boxes they've got but whether they
need to do that to get me my new speed, I really don't know.
I'm a little surprised they don't let the installer take the old modem
with him but that's apparently against policy so I have to take it down
to the post office and mail it from there using a special code to get
free postage. Seems like extra work on their part with no obvious
benefit to them....
Yeah, I think it lets them keep track of everything so equipment
doesn't get lost.
Before the installer arrived, someone in the back office called me allIt certainly sounds like it!
concerned that the wrong suite number was on the account's service
address. I told him that I didn't want to deal with it before
installation for fear that they'd disconnect the circuit that had to be
live during installation. They assured me that it wouldn't be. They
lied. Fortunately, the installer knew whom to call to get it turned back >>> on. The circuit merely had to be live to the building's basement.
Everything else was just making physical connections within the
building.
That was quite painful.
Even though we moved a block away, we crossed a magic boundary and
couldn't keep the old phone number.
By contrast, my mother didn't move at all and STILL had to give up her
old phone number. Apparently Bell was taking that exchange out of
service - it was the oldest in town - so she had to get a new number.
Luckily, she didn't care and it didn't mess her up at all. I don't know
what they did about businesses on that exchange; some of them must have
had major objections to their numbers changing due to the costs of
changing signage, advertising, business cards, etc....
The office admnistrator wanted
magicJack and failed to follow through with them to get the old phone
number ported (which could have happened prior to its disconnection at
the previous office). So the temporary phone number magicJack gave us
was our permanent phone number for five years.
magicJack was a terrible company. It was incredibly difficult finding
anybody who understood what they had to do on their end for networking.
I ended up getting the old phone number restored and then porting it to
a new service, then porting out the "temporary" magicJack number to a
new service after an incredibly painful process that required to file
a complaint with FCC. In the meantime, because magicJack had failed to
mark the number as ported out, they assigned it to a new subscriber who
found he couldn't receive any phone calls! That took a great deal of
correspondence to fix as well.
Sounds like a nightmare!
2025-05-22 7:16 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
Adam wrote:
- antennas can be lightning magnets which is a real issue if it's
mounted on your roof
Every wire entering the house must be grounded. And yes, you might want
to run it through a surge protector.
I supervised the telephone installation in the last office the School >>>>had. We could only get *DSL from the phone company. Cable hadn't lit lit >>>>the building
Somethings tells me you meant to use a different verb since cable
doesn't involve lighting....
That's what they called an installation on the block that any building >>could be hooked up to.
I'd never heard that before. Our Verizon training apparently omitted
that bit of jargon....
. . .
I'm a little surprised they don't let the installer take the old modem >>>with him but that's apparently against policy so I have to take it down >>>to the post office and mail it from there using a special code to get >>>free postage. Seems like extra work on their part with no obvious
benefit to them....
It's being returned to a different inventory than the one the installers >>draw from.
I would have thought Bell could easily distinguish between older model
used modems and the newer ones in both the installer trucks and their
supply depots but maybe that's just me....
. . .
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
| Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
| Users: | 546 |
| Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
| Uptime: | 24:44:36 |
| Calls: | 10,390 |
| Calls today: | 1 |
| Files: | 14,064 |
| Messages: | 6,417,013 |