atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Just ripped Cablevision a new you know what

Glacier:

Do your employees run a white RG6 up the side of a $1,000,000 home, diagonally, across the dark brown cedar siding, then pop open a screen on the second floor, run the coax across the floor of the 2nd floor stairwell, down the hall to the computer, and then plug in just one telephone to the modem?

Then do they use duct tape to keep the screen closed? and slam the sash down so that it crimps the coax, and doesn't quite keep out the cold winds? And tell the customer, who had a key system working just fine before they got there, that the new telephone service won't work on a "business" system?

Just wondering.

Do your employees move a working 4-line modem from one address to another, just a half-mile away, then refuse to acknowledge that their company has a problem, when telephones, connected via the SAME modem, connected to the SAME key system, don't dial out correctly?

Do they show up several times, armed only with a test set and an attitude, and tell the unsuspecting customer that the fault is in the key system?

Do they watch, as a trained telephone technician, with thirty years of Bell System experience in every facet of the job, and ten years of private business experience, (some of it as an expert witness) armed with $3,000 worth of test equipment, demonstrates that the problem is NOT in the key system? And still maintain that the problem is not theirs?

Just wondering.

We join and contribute to this Forum for good reasons. We could be out enjoying ourselves, but we sacrifice some time each day to commiserate about companies like yours and the hosing that you are giving our customers. We take this seriously, and we don't enjoy being told that we are picking on people unnecessarily. These so-called "telephone" companies deserve every bit of the criticism that is thrown at them.

Why would a TV company think that they can understand telephony, without first, at least, hiring some engineers, instructors, and seasoned technicians to oversee the "work" that the cable monkeys do? In other words, would you ask your dentist to take out your appendix?

Just wondering.

Like I tried to state before, no matter what business you are in, their are people who do shoddy work. This is no different than me walking into a bad system install and saying all phone people do crappy work. As far as your example, I have seen it done, but not in the company I work for. I did spend 10 years doing system installs and structured cabling before this. The company wanted me to start cutting corners so I left. I am not saying all companies know what they are doing, but until you visit every company and check their work I think you should stick with the ones that you know have problems. Also, as an FYI, our company does have trained phone engineers and techs on hand. And MAYBE, just MAYBE, if some of you "holier that thou" phone techs would lose the attitude for a few minutes each day you could play nice and get along. SO now you know so you don't have to wonder anymore. :thumb:

We are pretty lucky in this area. Most CATV companies won't do any inside work at all, but in the cases where they do, they seem to do OK. There are a few things that they do, like using white PVC plumbing pipe to protect the underground drop wire that rubs me the wrong way. That is cheesy-looking, but I don't think that the individual installers have any say in the matter about that kind of thing.

On the opposite end of things, Cox does a lot of high-end service here, like PRI's and T1's. I've been pretty impressed with the work that they've done on installations.

I think that the real culprits for making messes in this area are the sub-contracted installers being paid unit pricing for installs. There is no doubt that those are "wham-bam, thank you mam" installs since volume = more money for them. Our cable system where I live used subs when it was Adelphia, but since Comcast took over, it seems like everything is done by company employees or at least reasonable facsimiles.

Seems like the satellite system installers are by far the worst since it appears that these are almost exclusively installed by fixed-price subs. They are getting better, but they are still far from perfect installations.

I will say that I miss the days of dealing with a smaller cable company when it came to calling them. We could talk to someone local and even go over to the local office if we needed hardware. Now, I'm not sure where the people we call are. I guess that is the same all over the place anymore.

Glacier, I think you are taking this way too personally. If you and the cable company you work for have taken steps to address these problems then I commend you and your company. But others, it seems, just want to cash in on building a telephone subscriber base as quickly as possible. It may be also that there is a race going on because of direct competition from Verizon and Fios. Another reason may be to acquire as many subs as possible before the rates have to be raised because of the government imposing taxes and tariffs as they do on real telephone companies.

Whatever the reason, there is no excuse for poorly trained techs, not supplying the proper material and equipment and sloppy installations.

-Hal

Out of curiosity, do cable companies have a QC/QA group checking installs before paying the sub-contractors? Or even follow ups on the company installers?

I've never seen anyone or even had a call from either the cable or satellite companies after an install.

Shannon, you are correct, a lot of phone guys (including me) complain about the work done by others. Because of the way we were trained in the old days. When are you going to have the time to do it right? Only the first time.

And how did it work? Currently, guys are trained OJT. If they don't catch on, well, in my world, it's down the road they go.



.02

Ken, our company currently has QC/QA person for each region and the do a complete check of 6 jobs per tech per month. If you score poorly they check more the next month until you start doing better. Subcontractors get half of all of their jobs checked to start and if they are doing poorly, they are gone.

Around here I see so many subconractors...from Cable Express, to a guy with a ladder and a little magnet on his truck that says subcontractor for Time Warner...
I'm a member of the Cable Techs forum, and I see plenty of pictures of bad installs that they run into, just like we do with phones.

I don't necessarily blame the techs or subcontractors, I blame management. I remember we had a well stocked warehouse for what we were doing at that time (we were building plant). If we suggested something that we didn't have they would get it. Even the subs could go in and help themselves.

As for QC, that was one of my jobs also and if a company tech found crappy work during a visit to a sub work he was to report it and we would follow up. Not sure what happens in other companies today, I've never seen any QC people.

-Hal

The last place I saw QC was with Level 3 when we built out one of their big nodes here in NYC (this was about 18 months ago). Their people came by and made sure that none of our lacing stitches crossed over, that we had just the right amount of threads hanging out the bottom of the rods (below the nuts), that every piece of equipment was independently grounded and that the rack had been burnished down to bare metal where you tied down the ground wire etc, etc. My favorite though was that they insisted that the 5/8" & 7/8" nuts (at the end of the threaded rod) were installed with the round side down. Of course they were also concerned with whether you had installed the right cable and whether it and the associated equipment worked or not. But to look at all the nuts to see if they were installed flat side up!

They were tough!

During the dot-com boom the companies we installed backbone fiber for MFN, RCN, AT&T etc) all had Q&A/QC inspectors. They were mostly retired Bell System or Independent (GTE, Contel, etc) foremen. They wanted good work but they weren't as nuts as the Level 3 guys.

As the dot-com boom grew the companies ran out of retired Telco guys and started hiring kids. They were significantly less demanding. I kept our level of work up to what it had always been, but it was harder to keep the guys motivated knowing that the inspector was sleeping in his car instead of watching you.

QC/Q&A is expensive and I imagine that's one place that folks these days cut corners.

Sam

Basically thats what all "Cable" techs do! As far as using Arris equipment... thats fine but most system operators cant sweep for noise, noise is the big killer in any plant and without question is a primary factor why MSO's "phone" service sucks so bad.

I can speak on this with much experiance as I have personally installed about 3,000 residential, and 200 buisness eMTA's and to be very honest talked many of people out of switching. I did this after dealing with all the problems for three years. Needless to say on year number four I quit!

MSO cable modem telephone is a terrible solution for any sort of business, and for that matter a terrible solution for most residential customers. Do you really want a 40 dollar cable modem made in hong kong, supported by india, and maintained by an 9 dollar an hour technician with 4 months on the job? If you answerd yes call your local MSO and wait on hold for three hours to save 25 bucks for an 80% uptime guarntee!