[rescue] Boy, am I glad I didn't switch to Cable modem service...

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Monday, December 3, 2001 at 21:04:24 (-0500), s at avoidant.org wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [rescue] Boy, am I glad I didn't switch to Cable   modemservic e...
>
> That won't do at all. My mom's apartment building is a renovated
> factory, and during the renovation they wired the entire building for
> cable. The cable company then refused to drop a connection in because
> they said the wiring was "substandard" and that they wouldn't accept
> anything they hadn't done themselves.

There's a very very good chance that the cable plant (i.e. cable,
splitters, DAs, etc.) were indeed sub-standard.  The cable company can't
just accept it without being sure they can provide not just their
current service offerings, but whatever future offerings are in the pipe
too.  Developers really do have to go to the cable company first and
work with them to design the inside plant in a building like that,
otherwise you end up with a situation where even if one resident is
willing to pay for a custom install they won't be able to get it done,
no matter what they try, even in Canada with CRTC pressure, because the
building's probably not really zoned residential, and the cable company
might not get management approval to install in the common spaces
either.

Once upon a time any half-decent DA and a bunch of RG-58 was good
enough.  Who ever would have believed you'd need more than 350MHz
available on the cable plant, let alone 550MHz, then six months later
750MHz, and now not another year later 1GHz with well over 40MHz sub-low
reverse!  These days RG-6 with high-end low-loss connectors is minimum
for good inside wiring!

Up until a couple of years ago I lived in a townhouse complex that was
effectively co-operatively managed and several years ago the entire
complex had to be re-wired to allow pay-per-view (and eventually cable
modems).  Prior to that we had "free" basic cable, but somehow the deal
was worked out for the cable company to take over the inside plant and
in return they'd get to charge for individual connects.  Pretty much
every apparment and condo/townhouse complex in the city with a similar
vintage had to go through the same re-wiring.

The only nasty part is where co-op agreements which provided discount
basic cable were wiped out and each individual was forced to pay the
full monthly price.  In the end it really doesn't matter though, and it
may even be true that the per-unit billing is more cost effective.  The
only sad thing is that you can't always just put up your own little
antenna and get decent enough off-air reception, so you really can't get
"off the grid" so to speak so long as you want to watch TV at all.

Even in single-family dwelling housing developments you still end up
with developers thinking they can do wonderful things but not having a
clue technically.  We've got one such around here (Futureway) who've
been trying all kinds of things to do fibre-to-curb and fibre-to-home
stuff for all sevices (voice, data, video).  Unfortunately they've been
having a lot of trouble making it work, let alone cost effectively.
Just another kind of monopoly service provider.  They've been trying to
lock out even the telcos and local cable operators, but once their
streets are assumed by the city there's nothing stopping the local cable
company from ripping it up again and installing.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods at acm.org>     <woods at robohack.ca>
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