The saga of our internet
Jul. 5th, 2013 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fenchurchSo, here's the promised tale of how we have come to be without internet for two weeks and counting...
Before we moved in, we explored our options and discovered that we pretty much had to either go with cable or a local wi-max company (with lousy connection speed and even lousier customer service). Frontier has plans to bring fiber optic into the neighborhood, but doesn't even have DSL there right now. So, cable. The guy we were talking to about it checked the house and found a cable at the junction box and a cable coming out near the house and figured everything was ready to be set up. We set an appointment for the day after we moved in to have television, internet and a landline installed... only to be told at the last minute, when the tech actually came out to test the line, that there was a break in it somewhere.
What followed was a comedy of errors on the part of the cable company, meaning that appointments got canceled for various reasons and time kept ticking by. Finally, last weekend, the engineer actually got the work order for our house (apparently, the guy who entered it forgot to set the proper priority and so our order kept slipping down the list of jobs to be done) and he found where there was a break, came out, dug it up and fixed it... only to discover that there was at least one more break under our driveway and odds were good there would be more under the road.
The solution to all of these is running new line under the road then digging up part of our driveway to run new line from there to the front of our house. Which is when we got the bad news that it could take up to six more weeks for all of this. Kill. Me. Now.
After a day of huge threatening depression pounding me over the head, the engineer came back out and went over things withrackham and came up with a MUCH better solution... instead of taking the line across the front of the house (where, to be honest, we really don't want it), we'll be taking it across the side yard and around to the back of the house where it looks like cable was designed to be hooked up anyway. Yes, the whole "six weeks" thing was another aftereffect of the previous owner who apparently was hellbent on having cable come in the front of the house... we found out that the cable company had been out several times in the past to see about hooking things up but we're guessing he'd been put off by the same issues we'd been stressing over (since he'd had satellite and the aforementioned wi-max). But by moving it to the back of the house we basically have to wait for a permit from the county to run the line under the road and for the utility folks to come out and paint up the lawn where all the utility lines are running. And setting it up this way, the run is short enough that we won't be responsible for the cost, plus we'll be getting brand new pristine cable running in a conduit (something they do now by policy) instead of just running directly through the dirt.
The engineer thinks we should have all the approvals and utility marks and be ready to go by next week! MUCH better news, even if that's going to mean three-plus weeks total without internet, a landline or television.
So, I'm keeping my fingers crossed and trying not to get my hopes up too high... but with any luck, we'll be back online at home by late next week.
Crossposted from my Livejournal.
Before we moved in, we explored our options and discovered that we pretty much had to either go with cable or a local wi-max company (with lousy connection speed and even lousier customer service). Frontier has plans to bring fiber optic into the neighborhood, but doesn't even have DSL there right now. So, cable. The guy we were talking to about it checked the house and found a cable at the junction box and a cable coming out near the house and figured everything was ready to be set up. We set an appointment for the day after we moved in to have television, internet and a landline installed... only to be told at the last minute, when the tech actually came out to test the line, that there was a break in it somewhere.
What followed was a comedy of errors on the part of the cable company, meaning that appointments got canceled for various reasons and time kept ticking by. Finally, last weekend, the engineer actually got the work order for our house (apparently, the guy who entered it forgot to set the proper priority and so our order kept slipping down the list of jobs to be done) and he found where there was a break, came out, dug it up and fixed it... only to discover that there was at least one more break under our driveway and odds were good there would be more under the road.
The solution to all of these is running new line under the road then digging up part of our driveway to run new line from there to the front of our house. Which is when we got the bad news that it could take up to six more weeks for all of this. Kill. Me. Now.
After a day of huge threatening depression pounding me over the head, the engineer came back out and went over things with
rackham and came up with a MUCH better solution... instead of taking the line across the front of the house (where, to be honest, we really don't want it), we'll be taking it across the side yard and around to the back of the house where it looks like cable was designed to be hooked up anyway. Yes, the whole "six weeks" thing was another aftereffect of the previous owner who apparently was hellbent on having cable come in the front of the house... we found out that the cable company had been out several times in the past to see about hooking things up but we're guessing he'd been put off by the same issues we'd been stressing over (since he'd had satellite and the aforementioned wi-max). But by moving it to the back of the house we basically have to wait for a permit from the county to run the line under the road and for the utility folks to come out and paint up the lawn where all the utility lines are running. And setting it up this way, the run is short enough that we won't be responsible for the cost, plus we'll be getting brand new pristine cable running in a conduit (something they do now by policy) instead of just running directly through the dirt.The engineer thinks we should have all the approvals and utility marks and be ready to go by next week! MUCH better news, even if that's going to mean three-plus weeks total without internet, a landline or television.
So, I'm keeping my fingers crossed and trying not to get my hopes up too high... but with any luck, we'll be back online at home by late next week.
Crossposted from my Livejournal.
