Spectrum (legacy TWC) Infrastructure - Contact Off List

Wed Feb 1 22:18:46 UTC 2023

I think that this really says more about the race to the bottom in last
mile residential operations.

It seems inevitable that once a last mile residential broadband operator
grows to a certain gargantuan size, the quality of the network suffers and
nobody really cares to take ownership of specific local problems.

I've seen it many times looking at infrastructure of probably a dozen
different last mile operators in many different states and provinces.

And do you know what's commonly found in the same places as stuff like
garbage bag wrapped pedestals and coax temp-run between cans for months or
years at a time?  Employees who feel pressured to do cheap/shoddy/fast work
and move on to the next ticket. Or workers doing these tasks who aren't
employees at all but piece work 1099 workers under a subcontract or a
subcontractor-of-a-contractor.  It's not a good situation for the rank and
file workers either. Go find the worker who eventually fixes that temp-run
coax job and see if he's really happy with his job.

I wish that the people running the networks at residential last mile
operators with many hundreds of thousands up to dozens of millions of CPEs
would push back against efforts from executives/management to participate
in this race to the bottom of cost and network quality. It's too easy to
hand wave away the problem and be like "oh, but the middle mile fiber
aggregation router and core links in and out of this market look fine,
that's somebody else's problem to deal with the field work...".

On Tue, Jan 31, 2023 at 1:36 PM Gabriel Kuri via NANOG <nanog at nanog.org>
wrote:

> Could someone from Spectrum who deals with the HFC infrastructure in
> Southern California, specifically the legacy Time Warner Cable area,
> contact me off list ?
>
> Apparently the local infrastructure crew thinks it's OK to leave cable
> running between two cans in a residential neighborhood since at least July
> 2022. But it's OK, because they've cautioned them off with orange cones,
> right ?
>
> Multiple calls to regular customer service fall on deaf ears about a coax
> trunk cable run above ground on a street and sidewalk in the middle of a
> residential neighborhood.
>
> Customer service says, "We don't know what you're talking about, we don't
> have cables running on the street". Can't seem to get a hold of the right
> people to come out and get it buried and get rid of the eyesore and safety
> hazard ...
>
> [image: image1.jpg]
>
> [image: image2.jpg]
>
> Thanks,
> Gabe
>
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