[ale] comcast issues

[James P. Kinney III]

> Yesterday and today, my cable modem service either died or went at a
> snail's pace.  I called customer service today and got a person speaking
> english w/o accent (so it wasn't India this time...), so after we talked
> details of cable modem technology, he converted his "there are
> technicians in your neighborhood improving the network" line to "they're
> splitting fiber nodes."  What this means is that Comcast is currently in
> an upgrade mode, likely all over the city, dividing neighborhoods into
> half or less and activating the dark fiber installed when they initially
> did the big upgrade several years ago.  Splitting the fiber node that
> feeds a tree and branch coax network to a neighborhood essentially
> doubles the capacity to the neighborhood.  With telcos moving forward,
> albeit slowly, on fiber to the curb/service area, cable operators have
> to compete by pushing their fiber deeper towards the customer.  I
> believe this is why many of us have seen reduced service this weekend.
> Too bad they don't send an email out notifying us, so we don't think
> it's just poor service.

I thought that _was_ poor service! When my DSL service with Speakeasy is
headding for any kind of service disruption like a planned downtime or
expected slow rate, they send out an email 2 weeks in advance and again 2
days in advance. The one time there was an unplanned outage they actually
picked up the phone and a human _called_ me and explained that a major
router had literally caught fire (!!!) and a replacement was expected to
be installed within the next 2 hours.
>
> Daniel
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