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Telecom Rollouts Raise Ire Over Utility Boxes
Anti-Globalism points out this AP story, which notes:
"As cable and phone companies race to upgrade services or offer video for the first time, they're doing it by installing equipment in boxes on lawns, easements and curbs all over American neighborhoods. Telecommunications rollouts have always been messy, but several towns and residents are fighting back with cries of 'Not in my front yard!' AT&T Inc.'s nearly fridge-sized units, which route its new U-verse video product to customers, are drawing particular ire. A few caught fire or even exploded. AT&T said it has fixed that by replacing the units' backup batteries."
These structures are going to be in place for decades to come.
It certainly costs more to bury them but there's a very good reason that almost every new housing development chooses to bury utilities rather than display them.
In the long run, older neighborhoods will elect to bury the unsightly mess so it doesn't make sense to muck up an existing neighborhood for a short term cost savings.
Lamenting the sad state of broadband in the US (http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/13/1648211) is a common theme here, so you'd think we'd be gung-ho for any utility to start installing new gear. Instead, we get complaints that the new gear is ugly and that telcos don't want to negotiate a different standard with every little town. I hope we can at least agree that it's logical for the telcos to want one standard per state, at least for the sanity of their installer techs. I'm not objecting to making that standard rigorous, just so long as there's only one of them.
Personal experience, our town (Waltham, MA) was among the first to get FIOS strung up everywhere. It sits on the utility poles, which now carry power, copper, coaxial and fiber. It's not the prettiest set up in the world, but it's really not that bad. I used to live in a suburb that buried all our cables, which was considerably prettier. It also means that they aren't going to get fiber (installation costs aren't justified) and when there was an outage, it took weeks to get it resolved. I much prefer the uglier solution.
First of all, it's not a VW sized box, it's a 4 by 4 by 2 foot box, which is the size of a smaller refrigerator. Second of all, to bury the box you have a whole different set of problems to deal with; access is harder, drainage becomes a problem, and the hole that they dig to bury the box will be the size of a VW. Plus the access cover will be huge. Then you have to either patch the street, or back fill in the yard, which means that $50k is a low end number.
Now, if the city is smart, has the population density, and can make the budget work, the ideal solution is to build an underground utility system. Then everything is out of sight; but most of these problems are happening out west where everyone has their yard and lives 30 minutes to 2 hours from anything.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Easement clause is used in Kansas City by cable, phone, gas and electric companies. They are required to pay an additional fee for digging more than once a year or digging up roads paved less than 1 year. But they seem to find ways around the fee system. In the older neighborhood I live in, they use the excuse of upgrading for the two major hospitals in the area. They have actually damaged sewer pipes, caused driveways and sidewalks to sink to the point of having to be replaced, by the property owners and gotten away with not paying damages. The police are starting to openly complain that the larger boxes are being used by muggers to hide behind contributing to crime in the area. I think it will take the boxes getting vandalized for components to convince the companies to put them underground.
And then you get this. Yep, that's a knockoff of the Washington Monument. Compare it to this or this, which are at least architecturally interesting towers (move up and down the highway to get an idea of their appearance from several angles). At least the latter two aren't godawful monstrosities.
Maybe something like painting the utility boxes to make them be more like art than the boring single white/gray color they have.
Example 1: City of Surrey, BC
Example 2: San Diego
And don't forget that many towns do have local artists. Using the utility boxes for nice art (work-safe imagery only please!) would be something that can take the edge of people and make them forget to be annoyed by the item itself.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
So you've never been to Japan...
In some towns you can barely see the sky between the wires. And it's not for earthquake reason. It's just because of the cost. Some forward thinking towns are now requiring all new wire to be buried. Make more sense against typhoon, safer in case of earthquakes (no fallen power wires) and you can see the sky.
* Charge them rent for the use of your property, sending an invoice monthly. When they don't pay (who knows? a big enough A/P department might), report them to the credit bureaus. When they raise a stink about having to deal with that, offer to sell them the small patch of property for whatever the going rate is per-square-foot in your locale and maybe add a bit of padding for negotiations room.
* Use that spot to build your brand new compost pile. Build a large wooden box big enough to contain the thing, then keep it filled with manure (and when applicable, the 'dog bombs') and your grass clippings. Claim that the heat it generates is perfect for generating high-grade manure, and that you're only recycling otherwise wasted energy.
* Send them a bill for the years (or even decades) of landscaping (even just mowing) you've had to do in the spot the box now occupies. Also send them a bill for any and all landscaping you've done to hide the damned thing.
* Front Yard? Bolt your mailbox to it. Hell, offer to bolt your neighbors' mailboxes to it.
* Plant a tree next to it... the biggest one Home Depot has. The roots will eventually (within a couple of years) destroy the thing from underneath, and most towns now have 'green laws' that prevent a utility from cutting down or even harming the tree. They move, you win.
* Do what I did... buy a house in the back of a "flag lot" (just pick one with enough land around and in it so you don't feel crowded). No utility easements back here, folks. When Verizon showed up to drop in fiber, the only impact I saw was a long, skinny line of spray-paint at the front of the driveway. the neighbor up front OTOH got a shiny new box in his yard (which explains where a lot of these ideas came from).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?