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The 'Cable Guy' Now a Network Specialist
Hugh Pickens writes "Amy Chozick reports that cable guys, long depicted as slovenly cranks who dodged growling dogs and tracked mud on the living room carpet, often have backgrounds in engineering and computer science and certifications in network engineering. 'Back in my day, you called the phone company, we hooked it up, gave you a phone book and left,' says Paul Holloway, a 30-year employee of Verizon, which offers phone, Internet, television and home monitoring services through its FiOS fiber optic network. 'These days people are connecting iPhones, Xboxes and 17 other devices in the home.' The surge in high-tech offerings comes at a critical time for cable companies in an increasingly saturated Internet-based market where growth must come from all the extras like high-speed Internet service, home security, digital recording devices and other high-tech upgrades. 'They should really change the name to Time Warner Internet,' says Quirino Madia, a supervisor for Time Warner Cable. 'Nine out of 10 times, that's all people care about.' Despite their enhanced stature and additional responsibilities, technicians haven't benefited much financially. The median hourly income in 2010 for telecommunications equipment installers and repairers was $55,600 annually, up only 0.4 percent from 2008."
Last time I had a comcast tech out to fix my cable modem, I had to show them how to use ping.
he had several meters and black boxes his employer had given him but hadn't shown him how to use. He was standing there clipping clips to different connectors, saying "Is this what I hook this to?"
"'These days people are connecting iPhones, Xboxes and 17 other devices in the home." Seriously? Certs and a degree are needed to hook up equipment to a home network?
payed per job and are over scheduled leading to time where they don't even show time.
And I have seen job listed where they just say if you have a truck and a list of tools you can start right away.
Cable companies screw their employees just as much as their customers. Stay tuned while we go deep undercover into the world of cable company management and ask the really tough question why can they charge so much for a shit product? We'll get into that and more after the following commercials showing dancing toilet paper, talking animals, cars driving in the rain, and finally... angry white men trying to get elected. STAY TUNED!
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The median hourly income in 2010 for telecommunications equipment installers and repairers was $55,600 annually, up only 0.4 percent from 2008."
Terrific start to the year with that sentence!
A UK cable company now part of Virgin Media called itself "Telewest Broadband" to promote its internet service instead of their TV and phone offerings.
A lot of the time when you want stuff like that they don't know much about them and with the pc's they want to install that POS software on them. Also comcast give out the POS Norton AV as well.
I don't know that the cable providers are really trying to get "Network Specialists" to do the installs? I completely agree that times are changing, and today's installer is much more likely to be bringing the connection into a home for Internet service than for simply watching TV. But the median pay doesn't sound that out of line to me, for what I think they're really looking for -- which is someone capable of efficiently driving to customer locations and following some defined procedures to hook up the cable and attach the required equipment.
The real "Network Specialists" they'd pay a lot more for would be the guys working at the "back end" of the cable company, managing the large switches handling all the traffic going out to various neighborhoods and ensuring people aren't hacking a modem in some way to get more bandwidth than they paid for. Other back end workers would be responsible for such things as rolling out firmware upgrades to the cable modems or set-top boxes on their network, testing equipment that comes back in as defective or customer returns, and keeping on top of network outages.
Just because today's customer is more sophisticated and wants to attach 15 or 20 devices to their connection doesn't mean the INSTALLER is expected to assist with any of that. My personal experience with cable company troubleshooting of issues (such as intermittent connections) tells me that if anything, they'll ask you to disconnect the cable modem from everything else and troubleshoot with only one PC connected directly to it. They don't really understand, or WANT to understand all the other things you might be trying to do with it.
yeah. This'll be true when they do more than hook up a Belkin shit200 to their shitty modem. In order to be a "network specialist", you have to actually hook up a real network not install a fucking gateway and call it a day. They are installers. Period. They don't build networks. When they can claim that, they can claim an arbitrarily fancy sounding title.
Could be catchier. How about America Online?
Network specialists? My a$$. They are no more network specialists than bloggers are professional journalists (yes, I feel your pain and anger and feel free to think yourselves to be anything you want, which won't change a thing).
If you want to be sure that the work is done right, try to do as much of the local installations yourselves as possible. Otherwise you're in for a treat: lot of wasted time plus paying for stuff you end up doing yourselves anyway.
And no disrespect, but calling an average of >50k for cable installing low... come on, be at least a bit realistic.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I give them a sacrificial computer
"oh yea I totally use that 850MHz Pentium 3 as my daily computer, it meets all of your minimum requirements"
It does depend on how far back you go. I can believe that phone guys in the 80s didn't do a lot, but if you go further back, they tended to be at least moderately knowledgeable electricians, since a lot of phone issues ended up being something with the wiring.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
installed a “wireless gateway,” transforming an unused stairwell into a control room for the modem and router that can handle at least 24 devices at 22 megabits per second.
Anybody in this business more than 5 minutes, already knows you don't need an unused stairwell to hold a little apple airport. Unused Barbie Dollhouse stairwell, then I'll be impressed. My unused stairwell has a fileserver psuedo-nas, a small 3 unit compute cluster, a vlan capable ether switch with a zillion ports, a sbc6120 pdp-8 clone with an ethernet to serial telnet converter box, one of my ipphones that connects to the house asterisk ip pbx, and yes, I wedged an apple time machine box in there as a wireless gateway too.
Also not sure about the marketing figure of 24 devices. A /28 for the customer and a /29 for the public guest network? Uh, not. Probably just pulled than number out of a completely meaningless nether region.
Another rant is you don't need certifications in network engineering such as my long expired CCNP to ... crimp a F-connector on a cable, or yank cat-5 thru a wall. I think this is one of those ever so trendy and tiresome "be glad you networking guys at least have some kind of job, because physicists and aerospace engineers are stuck driving taxis" story. Its very much like implying that you "Need" a french literature degree to be a mcdonalds fry cook because that seems to be the only job position hiring french lit grads now a days. You need the overtraining and overeducation due to intense competition and lack of jobs, not because the workload requires it.
Finally, $55K is for a national job not just flyover big cities on the coasts. In the semi-rural area where I live, three times that gets you basically my house, a nice landed estate, an upgraded non-mcmansion house, an acre or so to grow gardens or have the kids play or put up a ham radio antenna in a non-HOA neighborhood, more or less low crime, decent neighbors, great four season weather, tons of money left over for kids education, travel/vacations, excellent local schools, tech toys, gourmet food, etc. Two spouses income and if you want you can live a rather more elaborate lifestyle, like perhaps own a house on a lakeshore, or substantial land for a private hunting reserve, etc. So spare me the comments that $55K in the flyover coastal areas or Chicago means living in a cardboard box and eating mac n cheese in the park; we know that. I know that TW pay has at least a small correction factor for local cost of living. The difference in salary required for "the good life" varies across the US by darn near a factor of 10, so if you can get a mid paying job in a fantastic area, its pretty good indeed.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Cable television is an extra to Internet service. That they still think otherwise just shows how out of touch they are.
But I don't think it means what you think it means.
The last time I had a cable Internet connection to be installed, I had ordered it without a network card, so I was sure that they would not give me a Windows Only one. I clearly had this on the application. I also installed Windows, because I knew it would not go well otherwise.
So I have a clean Windows installation with on a paper the MAC address that they will need to make the connection. The first guy comes in and no connection. Well obviously, because he is using the wrong MAC address. I explain this to him, so he tells me that for this they need to send an engineer by.
The engineer comes and I tell him the problem AND the solution. He seems not to believe me and looks around in various network settings. After 20 minutes (!) he calls in to his HQ and tells them the MAC address I already had for him.
All I wanted to have a working connection. The moment he left I called in, told them I had a new MAC address and gave them the MAC my router has. This was not possible as the account was allowed only one device.
So if they are really specialists, the first guy could have done the call with the MAC address, seen it working and save their company a lot of money.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
My foot. Sure, there are a few that know what they are doing and should be doing something more advanced ( and get paid for it ), but most that i have ever dealt with are buffoons and should be picking up trash instead.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Install cable systems is very hands on and lack of skills can you or others killed. Some of what cable guys do is like electricians and I want some who knows what they are doing not some one with just certs or Degrees. THIS IS LEARN ON THE JOB JOB! that should need a min of a degree to get in.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/106756
Just look at the story's where a cable guy grounds to a GAS LINE and other stuff.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/79994 Botched Comcast Install Blows Up House
Investigators believe grounding rod punctured gas line
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r25415431-Comcast-fried-my-new-Sony-52q-lcd-tv
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/80151
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/80368 both technicians stated that the company-installed "system" of cables on the roof were "a real mess" and were unsafely stretched over and near an electrical box and associated cables."
Professionalish titles will only cause people to demand professional quality 110% of the the time. But hey, here on SD all PR is good PR right?
also look at this gem
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22872520-lightning-killed-Comcast-modem-and-my-pc-attached-to-it
While I have a "good" (but small) cable company (right down to putting paper booties on when they enter the house), when I have a line problem and they talk about coming out, I always disconnect all of my other other routers and subnets and pipe the cable modem to one dedicated dumb little PC.
Habit formed from experience with a "bad" (but huge) cable company that would always blame the problem on my equipment if there was more than one wire between their modem and the PC.
If the big cable companies have gotten better at all, I would point the finger at their having better test equipment - equipment that obviates the need for knowledge.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
It will take month or maybe more for com cast to be fixed one week is to shout.
Maybe one week in the call centers / walk in centers. 1-2 weeks in the field. And 1 week in the back end at the head ends and other NOC's.
A lot of the time when you want stuff like that they don't know much about them
That's the company line, if you ask for cablecard... "We don't know what that is." They've got to feign ignorance
"Just rent our $LIMITED_MACHINE_WITH_FANCY_MARKETING_MATERIAL at $SUPER_INSANE_MARKUP per month or buy at $VASTLY_OVERSTATE_EQUIPMENT_WORTH."
Example: just rent our $2000 intentionally DRM-crippled DVR for $100/month that has a capacity of 20gb, or up to 20 hours of TV recording. Pause live TV, and record it (as long as the program doesn't have a no-record flag), rewind, and fast forward (except through no-fast-forward sections such as sponsored messages, where the broadcaster paid for the no-fast-forward bit).
Also comcast give out the POS Norton AV as well.
Mandatory software that the cable tech is required to offer, and encouraged to push as hard as possible, due to company commissions received later for AV subscription renewal revenues.
To get that pay and that is pulling long days as well.
My last cable installer felt it was best to drill from the outside, then discover where it went. Apparently the kitchen is the best place for a cable modem and wireless router, on the countertop next to the microwave. Suggestions to the contrary were ignored. The landlord said "He's an expert. Let him handle it." I'm glad the drill didn't end up in the shower.
Is this a fios ad?
also, this talks about all of the credentials and requirements they have... and supports that with the fact that people are connecting iPhones and Xboxes. Seriously?!?
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r26702537-HD-Comcast-could-have-set-my-house-on-fire.
They send out a box that later on one cable guy says they were supposed to stop giving these out quite awhile ago, and that they are known to do this, which is why they stopped using them...so just the guy at the Tech center was not so up to date, I suppose.
1. why do they still give out 5-6 year old boxes? (that can't get the new guide that comcast is working or use MPEG 4 channels)
2. why are people still being forced to rent boxes that old at prices that keep going up. Let's say $7-$16 /m has payed off that box and then some.
250GB is fast being becoming to low. even more so at 10M -20M+ download speeds.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why is it that every "remarks section" of a story dealing with Internet providers or Television providers becomes a dumping ground for pissed off malcontents bent on posting some innane rant? First off, there's a difference between traditional cable companies and telco companies providing inernet/television. Cable companies are creeping into the data centric entertainment service but still, there installers are mostly wire guys. I came into the FiOS field because it paid way more than $55k a year, mostly due to my experieince in both the EE field and the Network engineering. Before I was hooking up your brats XBox, I was either splicing fiber, setting up digital electronics such as DS1's and their relative equipment (CSU/DSU's) or managing a several hundred workstation LANs. I have an Electronic Eng. degree with a handful of certs (and not A+, Net + or any of those other "tech" certs). I have a valid C-7 license (State certified low voltage contractors license). Because Verizon pays for furthering eduction, I am working on a Network/Internet Security degree. And while this degree is an online degree through the local college, I still bust my ass with the reading and the assignments. Verizon may have hired whoever they could at first but they've been padding their workforce with degreed techs like me.
If unions like the Communications Workers of America (CWA) taught network engineering skills to members it would make a bigger union and a better workforce. Maybe make one's tuition payable out of one's union dues, with discounts for grades above 50%ile. Trade schools should be run out of the revenue of the trade, not out of the public pocket as a subsidy to that industry. The public should be in the business only of certifying minimum education standards, properly primarily educating applicants through highschool, and stimulating the incoming student body size to ensure strategic industries have a raw labor pool on which to grow and compete.
If the United Autoworkers had opened robotics and engineering schools for members in the 1980s instead of resisting automation, we'd have a better organized, educated and productive workforce, and a stronger domestic industry - and better cars.
If these unions were strong enough and offered better benefits, their membership would grow enough that we could have competing unions instead of the monopoly. Then strikes and other labor negotiations would bottom line at what's actually better for the industry's workforce as a whole, instead of just the members of that union.
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make install -not war
So you can get around systems that lock you to 1 mac.
Based on my own experiences, my cable company now tries to discourage technician visits. It takes a week to get an appointment, even if you have no service.
Now, they are encouraging customers to go to the local cable office to pick up their own equipment and install it themselves.
In recent years, the equipment itself has changed. The cable box is now a simple box, without even an on/off button. I think the idea is supposed to be "hook it up, plug it in, it works", requiring no expensive visit. Unfortunately it does not always work that way.
In my case, after hooking everything up and having the cable company register the box over the phone, the box would simply die. I could not even be able to turn it on. Following their advice, I did three exchanges before I lucked out with a phone person who knew what was happening. After entering a series of secret codes using the remote, the box suddenly worked. I don't think the boxes were physically defective at all. It would have been so much easier to have someone come out.
Now if only all of my channels would work...
The original article/post links to a page describing "Radio and Telecommunications Equipment Installers and Repairers" and their pay of $55,600, however what is actually being discussed here falls more under the "Line Installers and Repairers" description and their pay of $39,970. Hopefully that makes some of you feel better about the service (or lack thereof) you received from your 'cable guy'. The correct link for this job description is.... http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos195.htm
I think they're experts in routing cables in very tight and uncomfortable spaces like attics and crawl spaces. They would often want to route stuff directly through a wall rather than in-wall because it's the easier to do the former. But I appreciate their expertise in this area. Connecting stuff to MPOEs and NIDs they definitely know that stuff. How to tell if the wiring into a premises are electrical or telco, yup. Splicing fiber, definitely. I'm surprised they're paid that low because I've asked a contractor how much it would cost to route networking and video cables in a home and I was quoted $4500 for 20 drops.
But in terms of hooking stuff to an enterprise switch, I have doubts most of them know about VLANs and stuff like that.
$55K exceeds the median household income which include multiple earner households. So its not so bad a salary.
Coming Soon!
They still get paid slightly more than minimum wage.
More of a reason to hate Comcast and their scumbag Executives. Require more education for installers but refuse to pay them a living wage.
Anyone who says they get $55K is a moron. they Get $28-$30K
In my experience, it is an iron rule that when you find a good service tech for home accounts, they are about to be let go or take a buy-out or their department is being outsourced or whatever. And, when I say "about to be let go," I mean "have gotten notice."
Lot's IT / networking stuff is very hands on and is stuff you don't get in a cs degree. And Teaching network engineering skills is what trade schools and on the job does. CS is Teaching high level theory while some theory is good CS is to much on the theory side and lack the REAL work skills.
The pay isn't just for the work we do in all types of climates, it's for having to deal with people like you and smile about it =)
overeducation needs = discrimination on people who can do a job / can do a trade / tech schools but not a full college.
Renumber the old term not college material. Now we are going wrong way and makeing people get high and higher degrees for jobs that don't need them while jacking up loans at the same time as well. just to trun out people with lots book knowledge but little real work skills or knowledge
All companies regard employees as a pain in the ass. Going by the capitalist model, all workers are essentially profit-stealing overhead. Ideally a company with no employees, run entirely by machines, is the most profitable.
Basic economics works against the working class.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I can see a Xfinity SSID right now and they are only useing WEP.
back in the 80's & 90's, I was hired right out of high school w/ no experience and a bit of electrical training at school. 30 days training program, ride with other guys for a couple months, and then send you out. Granted, the services were simpler then, but the job hasn't changed much.
my heart bleeds. absolutely bleeds. how do they eat?
In the past month, I've seen installers from AT&T (twice) and Comcast (once) fail to configure their routers to the users current IP range. This left printers and anything else with static IP's unable to connect. The Comcast tech didn't know how to do an ipconfig /release-/renew on a Windows Vista computer, leaving the users computer unable to connect. He gave up and left, saying it wasn't his problem after he confirmed the Internet connection worked with his laptop.
i havent had to manually type in a nameserver in about 10 years.
im guessing its another case of nerd penis rage. "the stupid service person is so stupid! and i am so smart! bewilderment!"
no, you are just a rude, arrogant asshole, who probably got some poor schlub fired for fucking up their call response time.
Still deserve decent blue-collar salaries for wire installations.
one time , i even had one ask me 'how my day was going'.
can you imagine the nerve of these servants?
to talk to me, a LINUX user, like that? and they dont even know how to disassemble their makefiles? balderdash!
but in school i learned that if you work hard and study alot, you get rich!
Y u no appreciate beauty of captalism?
hmm.. it would appear that the vast majority of the people are living on peanuts.
always funny to see a bunch of self righteous indignant assholes get violently, abusively angry at people who can survive on 1/2 the money...
Every network tech should know (at least 25% of) Stevens' TCP/IP Illustrated, just as any structured programmer should know K&R's The C Programming Language. Whether they learn that as part of "computer science" or trade training depends on what they're learning to use the basic (if extensive) knowledge for. The more beyond that they know puts them on the spectrum of tech -> engineer -> scientist. There should be national standard certifications reflecting that knowledge, just like diplomas from highschool, college and grad school. But just as scientists aren't simply "extreme engineers", neither are network engineers necessarily less trained than computer scientists.
And all of them, techs/engineers/scientists need actual work experience to weight and refine their academic training into a useful skillset.
--
make install -not war
Congrats, Mr. cable guy, Larry on on youw new Net-werk specialization.
Get 'Er Done.
Or should he be saying.... Get 'Er surfing and streaming, and tweeting, now?
This should be an inspiration to cable company technicians everywhere. Go get your computer science degrees and engineering level certifications.
That why IT needs to be like plumbing or electrician work with class room and national standard certifications. And the class room part should be a the max 1-2 years with out the real work part. And when is time to move to the real work part then class room should move to the on going ongoing education. NO intern BS.
Also the classroom part needs to cover real work skills and case studies just like a tech schools + some base line theory. With IT there is alot that you need do hand on's or do cases studies with real skills backing to under stand and that is stuff that a theory based CS does not cover.
That is why some meany IT projects fail they are being run by people who are MBA's and other people who don't have hands on skills while they may have the theory on why it should work or why things should be done that way. They don't the hand on work experience to see why it does not work.
Also it does not help that CS covers a wide area and is more on the top level with big gaps in the knowledge of how all the smaller bit's of IT work.
Even at the lower level basic networking / desktop / sever is on it's own and far apart for say wide scale networking. Some it's like some can be good with big Cisco networks but not so much on the windows / desktop side. and on the other side you can have a good desktop / windows admin how only knows the basics of Cisco.
And some times they can't even do that right.
Please stop using that racist adjective of yours, English speakers. Thank you. --A Slavic guy
No they don't. They should be getting into a legitimate blue collar profession instead of snapping out all the non-regulated subbed out work from the real tradesmen. They are equivalent to the IT workers who take abusive poorly compensated tech jobs over the internet.
*snapping up Of course everybody deserves to make a good living, but the nature of piece work contracts is that you're going to get the lowest bidder every time. These guys aren't even qualified, and therefore don't deserve the same compensation as those who are. IE. Actual trained data guys or electricians. FYI all wiring is an electricians field, we often sub it out because the nature of the work is that it doesn't turn enough of a profit to bother with.
Agreed, and similar to these trades there would be different pay classes and credentials between residential, commercial and industrial environments.
True, except that plumbers and electricians aren't trained and certified like that. Only the licensed one; most of the people working for them have no formal training and no certification. Then they do all the work that the licensed professional is supposed to be doing. The license is just a liability control, to revoke if their corner cutting goes wrong enough times.
And their work is extremely sub-optimal. Especially when expansion, upgrade and maintenance of the plumbing or electrical work in needed, or anything unconventional would be better than the default. This is why theory as well as practice are essential to a quality professional.
The same is true of the MBAs running IT projects. Their degree is mostly just indoctrination into a manager class. None of them have project management skills unless forced in a hiring drought to slum as a project manager. None of them have real investment skills beyond either pure market ideology or direct instrument trading experience.
In fact so much of American education has become "talk the talk" training, hazing to indoctrinate into collusion with industry abuses and simple hiring clubs that it's tempting to ignore it as a model for where IT should go. Most of the best IT people I've known have taught themselves whatever they know, and most of the worst had some kind of certification. All this argues for reforming education overall, a tremendous undertaking that the aristocracy is already subverting into more grand theft and down-dumbing.
A good model would redirect the many business subsidies into paying for free public education for anyone passing the entrance exams. A curriculum beyond a 20% of fulltime liberal arts core (to counterbalance the urge to toxic overspecialization) in trades delivered by trade unions (labor), with degree exams delivered by trade associations (owners) or by even higher education institutions (next employers), all vetted and certified by the government. That format would allow internships to integrate well with the education, not as an afterthought that's mostly free labor for the crappiest tasks. And naturally segue into actual hiring.
We're heading there already, without the free public tuition part assured, and without the hand of labor orgs in the curriculum. The bosses are getting to set all the standards, which is as shortsighted and unbalanced as all of society's practices they've seized. Get the labor orgs responsible for quality in their membership, and cooperation with the bosses in producing the new labor generations, and the whole society, with the economy that measures it, running far smoother and more productively.
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make install -not war
Field installers are not network engineers. They know how to plug in a box that tells them "good" or "bad," but they have no idea otherwise what is going on.
They're frighteningly good at putting ends on coax, but that's about the end of it.
so buy just buying a piece of paper say BS IT is ok Most of the best IT people just to get a job?
So choice is 40K and 4 years or much less and a few click.
Why should some have to waste 4 years learning skills they know or don't need just to get a job?
who showed up to connect our cable in 2004 went up to outside box, stuck a big screwdriver under the hinge and destroyed the box by prying it off the house, complaining, "I hate bees!"
we've since dumped cable and are much happier w/FIOS (installed by a recently returned Marine [God bless 'em] who learned fiber 'net installs in that cesspool of the middle east; he did a great job, even tightening up our Verizon router, which still uses 'admin' and 'password' for the defaults)
cable? just say "No."
4 years is a long time after high schools for stuff like IT when A curriculum that has a real job / apprenticeships part of it that not only get's people working faster it also frees up room in schools for people as well.
As long as we're comiserating about incompetent techs and crappy internet providers, here's my little gem of a story. ..a phone cord! Ta-da! Are they kidding? Seriously?
I'm not thrilled about the notion of moving to Comcast's internet service, (Comcast sometimes gets under my skin) but I've totally had it with Verizon's DSL division. Nothing could be worse. Months ago, I called the Verizon DSL division to see about getting a newer DSL modem, as mine was one of the first ones Verizon distributed, it was 10 to 11 years old. And sorta slow. After a long hold time, I talked to a tech, apparently on the other side of the world, they said I should definitely upgrade it, and said they'd send me a new modem in 2 to 3 weeks, and if I sent my original back within 30 days there's no charge. Cool beans.
So two weeks later I get in the mail..
I called them back, and after waiting on hold for 40 minutes, said I was expecting a new modem, and I hoped they didn't expect me to send my original back yet, or charge me for a modem I didn't get. This tech -also from the other side of the planet- gives me the same story, 2 to 3 weeks, yadda yadda.. 3 weeks later, I get in the mail... a DSL filtering kit. What the fuck? They're idiots!
You would think I'm making this up but they're actually this incompetent, it'd be funny as hell if it didn't' piss me off.
My wife called them back this time, for a third shot at it, she also waited 40 minutes, but she finally talked to someone within 2000 miles of our house. He apologized, and offered to make it up to us by not only sending their top of the line DSL modem, but by also waiving the necessity of sending the original one back, to make up for the aggravation. I really don't care about their top of the line modem, I just wanted one a newer one without bells and whistles, but the wife had said okay, so....
Finally, this time I actually got the modem. Yay. Only, it's got built-in wireless and routing, and I already have a wireless Linksys router with a lot of customized configuration on it (mac table filter, etc); I just need a DSL *modem*. I'd been busy lately and I wasn't looking forward to the hassle of getting the new wireless router/modem to play nice with my network, so I put off installing it. (Maybe I could just have left the wireless bit turned off, I'm not sure).
More to the point, I also didn't send the old one back, as 1) we were told we wouldn't be asked to, as part of the "restitution", and 2) I was still using it.
So, two months later, we got charged $65 for the top of the line modem we weren't supposed to get charged for. FML. And, because they didn't like how we wouldn't pay for it at first, they cut off my cell phone service! (We have all 3 plans -landline, cell, internet- bundled) The wife paid them just to get my cell service back, despite my protests.
I could call them back yet again, but what difference would it make? They won't clear it up, they're utterly incompetent. And I don't believe in calling the BBB, they're just in bed with the corporations.
I say 3 strikes and you're out. Screw these assholes. And honestly, Comcast is faster anyway, I've seen neighbor's connections. I'm canceling my account next week and going cable, and when they ask why, I'll ask for a manager so he can get an earful. Hopefully I can sell the DSL kit and modem on eBay and get some of my money back.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
None of that is what I said - indeed, the opposite. At least I think so, based on your unintelligible post.
Your post is so illiterate and stupid that I expect you're not good at anything.
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make install -not war
When you consider they basically become "experts" of setting up a rather cookie-cutter wireless router setup and helping connect up the PS3 and iPad after half a dozen installs, ~$50K a year is a perfectly reasonable salary for a very repetitive task, so don't make it sound like they're drastically underpaid. They are not network specialists and certainly not network engineers when you can usually stump them by uttering words like "traceroute" and "nslookup".
Not saying they're all that limited in knowledge, but the ones I've dealt with would seriously be struggling if they were tossed into an IT shop for a week.
Haha. I once had to deal with a new building wired with CAT5. All the little lights on the tester worked, but no data went through. It turned out that the installer had kept the same wires to the same pins at both ends, but had split up all the twisted pairs, which of course broke the isolation from interference. AND he had run all the wiring down through the same hole in the floor from the wiring closet as the main power line coming into the building. Sigh. It's a good thing that the induced 60Hz on the CAT5 wasn't enough to fry some routers, but not much was actually plugged in at that point.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
You appear to have a positive karma, so I choose not to ignore that post as a troll.
Did you read the post you respond to? I linked to a page with several definitions (some of which overlap, others are mutually exclusive) and stated that by some of those definitions, all bloggers are journalists and by other definitions none of them are. And mentioned, that my based on the definition that I like the most, some of them are journalists.
How is that ignoring the others that contradict me?
My Mom called Comcast because her Internet was out, and the tech who showed up said, "clearly your wifi is the problem", ignoring the fact that her connection had worked fine for about a year and she was able to stream movies to her Boxee Box from her Linux file server. He proceeded to change out the modem (the ACTUAL source of the problem) and then connected her Windows PC directly to the new cablemodem. I had to drive from Philly to Orlando to reverse all the damage that piece of trash did. What a complete jerk. You do NOT connect PCs directly to the Internet anymore.
How many of us actually have the MAC address of our PCs written on bits of paper just in case we need it if the machine dies? While cards may have it printed on most motherboards don't.
Because employers can't afford to put every candidate through a two-day series of intensive exams and assessments to determine their actual skill level. Employers barely bother to skim a CV. The piece of paper tells them that this candidate has passed a course, and so probably isn't a total idiot in the field.
Since when is 50K a low salary? I know programmers with CS degrees that get paid less than that. I also know professional AV specialists that do network and av drops that only get paid about 40k a year. 50K is pretty good for a skilled labor job if you ask me. They're not engineers or scientists, so they don't get engineer and scientist pay. They get damn good technician pay.
The last thing I want is this slovenly pig coming in my house and loading up my computer with incest porn and bookmarks to Stormfront...
That why bypassing tech schools and wanting 4 year CS for jobs tech / IT jobs is wrong way to do it. That is why IT needs a outside trade / union to help with that.
and what does a piece of paper prove when you get people who don't know the basics.
Why hell should the union provide training that is the job of the employers/industry? What is the Trade union issue here brother? The only training a union needs todo is to train its activists and officers in their specialized needs eg employment law and dealing with cases.
Unions have a role in lobbying for things like industry training levies making sure that state funds go to vocational courses and not to run bogus sports departments like all the American universities do.
Not everyone is cut out for school. Not every school is worth the tens of thousands in loans it takes to go there. Now That is there the look for a piece of paper get's you.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-years-resolutions-for-uncle-sam-2011-12-30?link=MW_story_investinginsight
Around here, Time Warner uses a lot of 3rd party installers, and you are very lucky if you get one who is not a trashy moron. One guy insisted my newly installed cable would work "in a little while," after he left. Of course it did not magically fix itself after he called it a day. Another chap, who looked like a hillbilly who had just woken up after a five-day bender (complete with half-buttoned shirt and greasy hair), used my master bathroom to take a dump, then couldn't offer any solution to the weak signal upstairs. Maybe other folks have had better experiences, but it seems that cable "techs" have collectively earned their bad reputation.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
I hear you. Last time I had a problem with my FiOS, when the tech showed up rather than waste time going thru my stuff, I took him outside and plugged a laptop directly into the ONT and showed him how bad the connection was right there. He traced the problem back upstream from the ONT and said a connection on the buried fiber optic line had come loose and gotten mud in it. When he opened it water and mud came pouring out. He cleaned the connection, reconnected it, and put silicone wrap around it. Problem fixed.
There's a problem with using some central DNS servers out in the wild somewhere. This breaks location based services such as Akamai. I too used to use Google's DNS servers until one day I downloaded a service pack from Microsoft and found I was getting around 350kb/s rather than the 1.9mb/s I usually get. Quick survey found this problem was wide spread with various downloads.
These services provide your with an IP address based on the location of the DNS server you use. Once I switched back to my ISP's DNS I got back to the speeds I'm used to.
These days I take the middle route by running my own caching DNS server at home. It seems to be the best of all worlds. Control, conformity to standards, and speed.
I refuse to let the "cable guy" inside my house. If I have a problem, I tell them to check it to the connection point coming into the house. I'll take it from there. "But we need to bla bla bla". No, you don't! I don't want you touching one key on my computer...PERIOD! Seen way to many people have computers screwed up by "cable installers", who have no clue what they are doing. If you have a signal getting to the junction box, I can handle it from there. I wouldn't even let them install my cable gateway (I hate the term modem). I said unless I can pick up the box myself & install it....I'll just go with something else.
Well, in my previous reply, describing the issues with Comcast's self-install captive portal, I was pretty quickly able to talk the tech around the necessity of their software install. I wonder if it was because I actually used the term "captive portal"? And I can SO guarantee I am so much more secure than one of the everyday boxes they deal with.
It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage. - Colonel Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Ph.D.
I used to work in Level3 for a cable company and I can tell you that most of the techs don't even check the RF power levels on the lines half the time. Heck, I've had to send a FOREMAN out just to get someone that would actually unplug a modem to trace a simple RF problem to a splitter and have it fixed in 5 minutes or less. Forget about even expecting them to know how to check the IP address the customer was getting if they can't even take care of an RF issue that "technically" they should be experts in for all the checks they do on the lines for regular TV service all the time.
The fatal flaw of the article is that the techs they mention in it are all foreman level or supervisors. NONE of which are the regular cable techs that we all know and loath. Install techs are also better trained and have higher expectations placed on them so they are (generally) at least a little better than the average tech but still no where near being called a "Specialist" given that many of them still needed one of us to tell them how to put in a wireless key on a MAC or PC.
That being said though, the cable industry itself is changing. Gradually all cable techs will have no choice but to actually learn something or take a hike thanks to the newer technologies coming out (ex DOCSIS Set-top Gateway).
>>All they ever do is use their meter to check the signals coming through the line. If the signals are good that is all they are interested in.
It may be a union issue.
I had problems at the last place I lived at (and this place, too, come to think of it), due to what I was told was a leaking conduit ruining the connection between my apartment and the nearest box, causing intermittent outages, which would last up to three or four days at a time. Couldn't get cable modem, so AT&T copper was my only real choice. They'd take a week to come out, so the internet would be back up by then, they'd test the cable, say it was fine, and then leave.
It took a dozen or so service calls to finally get them to dig up the yard and fix the conduit. But in the meantime, a number of guys came out, told me things they would try if they weren't prohibited by it by union rules, and then leave. Was... frustrating.
At my new place, the problem was that my house was phantom dialing random numbers without even having a single phone plugged in. I got a huge long distance bill and three visits from the police (random 911 dial) - that shit got fixed QUICKLY.
That's not a CAT-5 "tester" it's just a basic $5 continuity check. Any installer worth their salt has a "certification" tester, and before they get paid will sign-off on the fact that every cable they ran fully checks out to CAT-5 specifications, per their (moderately-) expensive certification tester. Even small issues like the pairs being untwisted just a bit too far when the ends were installed, will be flagged by any halfway decent tester.
Nobody should be running a non-trivial sized network without a decent tester. A Fluke CableIQ is well worth the money (about $1,000). But even a much older 100BaseTx Fluke tester (about $250 on ebay last I looked) will be pretty strict and catch almost all cable installer mistakes.
I'm hesitant to recommend it, but you can also look into the Byte Brothers RWC1000 for about $300. It makes a very good probe, has an interesting work-flow for cable-testing that can save time in a number of cases if your usage happens to line up with it's design, and it's a good enough tester that it'll at least flag more serious wiring mistakes, but it's clearly not even as hypercritical of cabling as older 100BaseT Fluke testers I've used...
So you've got to pick your priorities. You get some more useful features with a RWC that you'd want if your company is small and doesn't already have them in discrete units, but it's not as good at cable testing... it's main function. And it's slower and less amenable to one-man operation than better tools (the market dominated by Fluke).
Besides being an issue in itself, that's clearly a very basic building code violation in most if not all jurisdictions. I have a hard time believing any bonded contractor would be so stupid. Did your company hire some unlicensed teenager with no professional experience, at slave wages?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I've dealt with plenty of level 1 tech support BS, but I've never had a problem with home installers.
the install techs just make sure the modem is hooked up. I can and do handle the home networking myself. (I suppose this could be specified in the ordering process, so the ISP knows what techs to send out and with what equipment)
Cox - apartment was already wired, so tech just needed to hook up the modem and make sure the line still worked. the only device was my PC, so networking was a moot point
Time Warner - house was not already wired, techs spent a lot of time working out the cable run. switched from another ISP, used the existing home networking setup with the new modem/ISP
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Cox in northern Virginia seems guilty of this. They seem to use their bandwith cap mainly as an upsell opportunity. (as opposed to hard enforcement like throttling or absolute cutoff).
I didn't hit that cap even when I tried to use plenty of bandwith. However, I didn't run my bit torrent client quite as often. (I started off a bunch of torrents, didn't do as much uploading after the initially propagated)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
My last comcast service installer was a Wiz! He had it going in nothing flat! Here are my steps for repeating my experience, and getting the best available!
1. Purchase your own cable modem/box or go and pick up the rented hardware from the local Comcast service center.
2. Install everything yourself.
3. Call to have it activated.
I was just a contractor myself, building out a small ISP in the building that was to be located in the building. The wiring was contracted to a local company that was supposed to be competent. I think they were much more used to wiring telephone systems. They had a hard time believing there was a problem until I demonstrated, in fact I actually took a couple of wall outlets apart to see what was going on, which was when the problem was 'uncovered' so to speak. This was all back in 1996 or 1997, so it was early days for CAT-5 in general, especially out in the wilds of Central Oregon. I think it was actually the first CAT-5 installation in the area. But the installer should have known better than to split twisted pairs in any case - that's just basic.
It was definitely a screw-up.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
They sent out a "Network Specialist" to trouble shoot my cable modem. I walked to the bathroom and stopped by the fridge to get a drink....in that short amount of time, I see the guy ripping cross connects out of my switch, (this has nothing to do with the cable modem, mind you)....and I wasn't even polite about it, "WHAT THE F*CK ARE YOU DOING?!?!?!"
his reply: "I'm testing the network, but everytime I do an ipconfig /release and /renew it gets a 192. address"
Mine: "NO SHIT SHERLOCK, that's an INTERNAL NETWORK IP....if you want the external IP you have to do the command FROM THE ROUTER YOU IDIOT......now back off for 10 minutes so I can fix what you've screwed up"
Network specialist my ass, how the hell did this article make it out of the "recently posted" section?!?
(Note: This was with Suddenlink....they're absolutely horrible, they don't understand the technology, cable TV or Internet...and I'll never move to another Suddenlink market again. I'm with Cox now, and I've got 55/5 and I'm please)
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
both Capitalism and Communism are doomed?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!