atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Telecom Service & Providers What the hell is going on here?

New one on me. Full disclosure, this is a single family house where the landlord had his elderly mother living downstairs and a tenant on the second floor. Elderly mother either passes away or goes into a nursing home so he rents to my wife's aunt.

Auntie Maria calls Cablevision (or Optimum, Altice or whatever they call themselves this month) to have phone, internet and TV installed. Apparently the old lady who previously lived there had none of that so the installer wires the place, runs a new drop, sets up WiFi and router and cable box and leaves with everything working.

That night the lady who lives upstairs comes down and asks if Auntie Maria had the cable company here because hers was no longer working. Now, she has Verizon FiOS. So Auntie Maria suggests that there must be some mistake. Maybe the installer cut some of your cables by mistake.

So the lady upstairs calls Verizon and a tech shows up to repair her service. Now Auntie Maria has no service!

Auntie Maria calls Cablevision (in Bangladesh apparently) and is told that there was no mistake- only one account is allowed per address. WHAT? If that were true 90% of my customers wouldn't be able to get service. I have two Optimum accounts here in my house. Forget about this situation where one account was Cablevision and the other Verizon.

First thought was that she is in the middle of some pissing match between companies but neither Verizon or Cablevision will create two accounts for that address. And, what gives one companies techs the right to disconnect the other? Never heard of such thing. If I were there that installer wouldn't have made it to his truck.

Apparently Auntie Maria asked to speak to a supervisor but was told none was available. Probably all out washing down the elephants or water buffalo.

-Hal

Likely was originally wired as a single family, with coax running all over the place.... so to make the TV work in the living room and the bedroom on the first floor, it's using the same wire that goes to the upstairs bedroom and living room... there's only 1 coax, so only 1 provider can use it.... gotta stop hooking to the existing in-house wiring and just run things directly from the drop to the box in each location. both installers will assume that the in-house wiring is theirs to use, since it's a single family residence.....

I was a cable installer many, many years ago and I understand what you are saying. It might be that the Cablevision installer assumed that the Verizon service was dead and Auntie Maria was the new owner or tenant. Then the Verizon tech comes back, is pissed off that their competitor used his wiring so he puts it back on his service.

Thing is, I had the brains to realize that there might be two tenants and services in that building and would at least check out where the existing wiring went and maybe get out my meter to see if it's still active.

That intelligence is no longer available today plus installers only care about how fast they can complete a job anyway. So if they can reuse wiring it will save them time.

Now, about Cablevision CSRs. I've found them to be the most incompetent people on earth. Apparently that greedy French guy that bought Cablevision from the Dolans is getting his money's worth from moving the call center from the US to whatever third world country it's in now. So whatever they tell you take with a grain of salt.

Filing a complaint with the state PSC does seem to do something. At least you get a call from somebody at Cablevision that is here and speaks English.

-Hal

Does the house have a C of O for two-family, or is it a one-family with an "illegal" apartment? There are two tenants. Tow addresses, one would assume. 1234 Main Street, Apt A and apt B.

There aren't two addresses. Just two different names at the same address. And it's first floor and second floor. It's not a legal two family. One electric meter with the account in the name of the landlord.

-Hal

It might be a state/county thing, but I remember several instances where customers had Comcast for TV and Verizon FiOS for Internet. If I recall, FiOS had a fairly weak (and pricey) video package, yet Comcast didn't offer consistent Internet speeds. I'm sure the customers were paying more than using one provider would have cost, but they had priorities that warranted such. I can't see how either provider could argue this if the customer made it clear what their expectations were. I don't how their billing was set up though.

I'm more curious about how either provider in your case even knew about the other without doing some very intrusive and unauthorized digging around. It sounds like a case of sour grapes to me.

In California, you have to have a separate address to get a different account. It doesn't matter how many people you rent a room or a floor to unless there is a separate address that the US Post Office recognizes they will not allow multiple accounts at one address.

No, they dont care. Particularly if another provider is there. Of course you can have more than one utility serving your address that's ridiculous.

They are fighting over the same coax, you need to pay to run a new coax to one side or the other, or find where the splitter is that's feeding both locations.

Last time I saw a fios order no one cared about new sublocations, they even encouraged them because they counted as a new install instead of an upgrade.

Copper would have completed different addresses in a terminal just from a misplaced space in the address.

Eventually they would refuse service to a fictitious/not to code sublocation but only if they were running out of fibers in the terminal.

Keep in mind everyone who is not familiar with Verizon's FiOS service, it uses a separate fiber-optic cable from a pole or pedestal terminal to the building. It's not until it enters their ONT that coaxial cable is used for TV services. There's no "fighting over the same COAX" in these situations. As Hal mentioned, the new tenant downstairs had the entire place wired new when she had her service installed. Her wiring and her service have nothing in common with the upstairs tenant.

In this instance, SOMEone made the determination to disconnect Verizon's fiber optic cable. That's teetering upon wiretapping charges in court, not to mention 911 liability issues had there been an emergency. There's NO way that any legitimate utility (and I use that term lightly when referring to CATV operators or Verizon) can legally go around disconnecting the facilities of their competitors'.

As I understood it, it sounded like verizon came back out and switched her back over and knocked the other tenant out again.

And yes, disconnecting the service from the other provider is so scandalous I can't imagine a tech doing it purposefully.

It could be as easy as the techs aren't bothering to tone back their runs. They just unscrewed the main coax splitter from one and put it kn the other because no one was thinking about the other tenant that wanted to keep service

Maybe forgive the first tech, everyone all around probably didn't think about it until he left.

Given the situation, the 2nd tech should have definitely been told there is another customer here and he's going to have to take a whole 15 minutes to tone out the two or three jacks that upstairs wants and take them off the fios splitter to the main house. If he was a good boy he might even put terminators o the splitter. (Haha, I made a funny joke, what's a terminator?)

2nd tech going in, and knowing there's multiple tenants and services here just goes in and whacks the fios service (probably just their coax feed, I still dont believe he would touch their drop) is yes monstrous

If fios came out as a 3rd tech onsite and did it again, then now I'd have to guess theres not actually any malice. The ont and coax feed must have the same demarc and only have a single coax feeding to some other distant splitter where service actually splits for both tenants. Neither wants to run another coax to that splitter to set up both tenants properly

Some of you posters are getting too complicated. It's really just this simple.

• Job order come in to Company B install new service
• The technician installs their equipment to existing cable
• Old service is knocked out
• Service call is placed Company A to fix outage
• Company A connects the back to their equipment

No one knows, cares or is informed that there is existing service that needs to stay.

It doesn't matter how many DIFFERENT services providers one single dwelling can have. Multiple accounts from the SAME provider could be an issue, but that's not the case here.

If you don't want to try to figure it out for yourself by toning the coax and looking to see what goes where, then you could try for a vendor meet with both providers and let the technicians fight it out onsite.

Still over complicated.

The second company needs to come back and correctly install their service as requested WITHOUT disrupting current service.

I agree. But you forgot to add to that a moron off-shore CSR who has no idea what they are talking about said that there can't be two services to the same address.

So now Auntie Maria wants to take a bus to return the cable box because they are harassing her for $300.

-Hal

CSR Moron should't be in the picture.

They only were because Auntie Maria (who is elderly and lives alone) believes anything and has no clue. Her cable stopped working so she calls Cablevision. Instead of just reporting that here cable was out, she explains to them that it went out after Verizon was there fixing the service for the lady upstairs, which stopped working when the Cablevision installer was there. At that point the quick thinking CSR put two and two together and told her that there could be only one account per house. She didn't want to make a commotion because she didn't want to get the landlord in trouble. So now she is going to take a bus to turn in the cable box because Cablevision closed almost all their locations and they are harassing her for $300.

Oh, and she figures she is OK right now because the lady upstairs gave her the password for her Verizon WiFI and she'll split the cost with her.

I can't make this stuff up.

-Hal

Sometimes you just have to shake your head and walk away.

Am I the only one who got "overly complicated" and read the part where the CATV installer ran all new wiring to the first floor outlets? If he did so, and ran his own drop to feed this service, where would anyone with half a brain find it appropriate to disconnect wiring that is totally unrelated to the wiring for the existing second floor wiring? According to Hal's original post, if I understood correctly, there was only existing wiring there for the second floor of the house.

Never believe anyone that says they ran all brand new anything unless I watched him myself.

Dunno Ed. I am no where near there (she's out on Long Island and you know where I am) so I can only speculate from what she told my wife. I can't see why an installer would disco another subscriber unless he thought some wiring was dead and he could reuse it for his job.

-Hal

Where on Long island? I might be able to help in person at a vendor meeting. (I fire "expert" with both hands.)

Massapequa.

Her son is an IT "professional" and said he will look into it.

-Hal

The problem with most IT "professionals" is that they are fine in their specific niche of the logical layer, but move them to the physical layer and they don't have the slightest clue.

Just remembered this thread. So the update is Auntie Maria doesn't want to get in trouble or the landlord in trouble so she is paying the girl upstairs half of her internet and continues to use her password. Auntie Maria doesn't need a landline and uses her cell phone.

Her IT "professional" son is nowhere to be found and the girl upstairs is so nice. Let's see how long that is going to last.

-Hal