john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) (03/17/91)
This talk about the problems in Rochester reminds me of a telling
situation that happened right here in my neighborhood a couple of
years ago.
Almost simultaneously the cable, ALL of my phone lines, and the
electricity went dead. A short time later, fire engines were screaming
down the street. It seems that some trees had caught fire in the next
block and had taken out all the services on the poles nearby. In my
inimitable fashion, I went to a payphone to report all three. I
realized the cause, but wanted to have a trouble report on file so
that if there were any screwups later, I would be able to refer to my
initial complaint, not to mention get credit for lengthy service
interruptions. By the way, always report an outage (particularly
telephone) even if you know the cause and know it is being handled so
that you can get that credit later.
What is interesting is the order in which the services were restored.
Within a very short time after the fire was extinguished the cable was
restored. I have some battery operated TVs and was able to observe
this for myself. An hour or so after that, the electricity came back
on. The next morning I discovered that phone service was still
missing, but at 9AM a Pac*Bell supervisor knocked on my door to tell
me that the entire block was without phone service (I knew that) and
he came by my place because I was the only one who called in trouble.
He explained that the reason it was taking so long was that there was
shock hazard from the PG&E restoration work.
As it turned out, telephone service was restored by late afternoon,
about twenty-four hours after the outage began. Not very impressive.
So it breaks down like this:
The cable company had its act together. Its service restoral (while
hardly essential) was first rate. PG&E took three hours to restore
service. PG&E is probably the worst electric utility on the planet so
for them it was probably miraculous. Never mind that the fire was
originally started by primary wires arcing in the trees because PG&E
felt it unnecessary to do any trimming. But wiping up the rear was
Pac*Bell, who was too wimpy to even begin work on its cable until the
next day.
John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395
john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !kaufman@neon.stanford.edu (Marc T. Kaufman) (03/18/91)
In article <telecom11.210.4@eecs.nwu.edu> John Higdon <john@zygot.ati. com> writes: > So it breaks down like this: > The cable company had its act together. Its service restoral (while > hardly essential) was first rate. PG&E took three hours to restore > service. PG&E is probably the worst electric utility on the planet so > for them it was probably miraculous. Never mind that the fire was > originally started by primary wires arcing in the trees because PG&E > felt it unnecessary to do any trimming. But wiping up the rear was > Pac*Bell, who was too wimpy to even begin work on its cable until the > next day. Let's see ... the cable company had one "pair" to restore, and was probably lowest on the pole, having been established last. PG&E also had one pair to restore, well maybe four if the pole had the maximum number of house drops. Power is life-critical in that your forced- air furnace won't work unless the fan can be powered and the medicine in your refrigerater will get warm. I don't blame the phone company for not wanting to work while PG&E is on the pole stringing 12KV wires. And how easy is it to put up a new splice box (or two) in the rain with only the truck's spotlight for illumination? Marc Kaufman (kaufman@neon.stanford.edu)
John Higdon <john@zygot.ati.com> (03/18/91)
"Marc T. Kaufman" <kaufman@neon.stanford.edu> writes: > Let's see ... the cable company had one "pair" to restore, and was > probably lowest on the pole, having been established last. It is a dual cable system. Have you ever worked with the type of coax that is used in cable systems? It is semi-rigid and a bear to manipulate. Also, it is installed ABOVE the telco cable (as are most that I have seen around the country). So the cable people had to work around the damaged telco cable to fix the TV feed. The fact that PG&E was working on the 12KV lines did not seem to bother them much. > PG&E also had one pair to restore, well maybe four if the pole had > the maximum number of house drops. PG&E had house drops, three 12KV primary wires and a transformer to replace. Maybe since it was that company's negligence which caused the fire a decision was made to hustle it. > I don't blame the phone company for not wanting to work while PG&E is > on the pole stringing 12KV wires. And how easy is it to put up a new > splice box (or two) in the rain with only the truck's spotlight for > illumination? That is a good excuse for after the sun went down (at 9PM), but what were they doing for the previous seven hours? When electricity came back, there were still three or four hours of daylight left. Actually, this is a common story with Pac*Bell. When the trouble people come out and determine that the job will require cable splicers, then you can be assured that it will be a "next day" job. Besides, what would one need a phone for anyway? To report a fire? :-) John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
wegeng@arisia.xerox.com (03/18/91)
For what it's worth, the repair pattern here in Rochester seems to be: 1. A Rochester Gas & Electric crew (or a crew on loan from another electric company) restores power (by restringing lines, removing fallen branches from the lines, etc.). 2. A Rochester Telephone crew (or a crew on loan from another telephone company) follows the electric company crews, and restores telephone service. 3. Greater Rochester Cablevision restores cable TV. This order kinda makes sense to me. The electric company people are the experts in working with high voltage lines, so let them do their thing before everybody else shows up. It also makes sense to make restoration of electric service the highest priority, so the other crews stay out the way until that's been accomplished. Personally, I've been pleased with the repair service. I was one of the lucky people who never lost electric or telephone service, but the lines for both were knocked down. The electric line was replaced without disconnecting my existing service (so I didn't have to reset any of my digital clocks). The telephone crew showed up a day later. The electric crew also cut the fallen tree limbs into fireplace size logs, which they didn't have to do (it certainly made my clean up task a bit easier). Now, if only my cable TV service were restored. (It's been out for over two weeks). Don
mike@nyquist.bellcore.com (Mike Lukacs 21341) (03/19/91)
In article <telecom11.210.4@eecs.nwu.edu>, john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) writes: |> This talk about the problems in Rochester reminds me of a telling |> situation that happened right here in my neighborhood a couple of |> years ago. |> So it breaks down like this: |> The cable company had its act together. Its service restoral (while |> hardly essential) was first rate. PG&E took three hours to restore |> Pac*Bell, who was too wimpy to even begin work on its cable until the |> next day. I had a similar situation in my neighborhood ten years ago; a hurricane took down some trees and all the phone and power lines in several places. Power was restored in 24 Hrs., Phones took three days. However! Consider the magnitude of the various restoration processes! Cable television is a low voltage tree structured service. The cable company needed to get one man with a lift truck or a ladder to splice ONE coaxial cable in two places to bypass the damaged section. The power company had to first make the area safe by removing all wire remnants and cutting back tree limbs that came too close etc. They then had to rehang in a well insulated manner, and reconnect TWO to SIX high voltage wires. The telephone company had to sort out, "buzz out", unscramble, install and connect several hundred or several thousand (!!) subscriber lines. Naturally this takes considerably longer to do. In the case of my neighborhood, the power company responded and had men on the scene in four hours. (Ours was not the only problem they had that day.) The local phone company had people investigating the damage at about the same time, but could not begin repairs until the power electricians were finished. Power is considered to be a more essential service, and since all are on the same poles, the phone repairers are REQUIRED to stand back and not interfere with the power work, both for the safety of all involved, and to promote a speedier repair of the power lines. I suspect that in your case, the cable company was able to bypass the affected section via a noninterfering route, else they too would have had to wait. DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed | M. E. Lukacs NVC-3X-330 in the above are my own, and not | Bell Communications Research (BELLCORE) those of Bell Communications Research.| 331 Newman Springs Road By Law, | Red Bank, New Jersey, USA 07701-7040 | (201) or (908) 758-2876 FAX: 758-0889 mike@nyquist.bellcore.com
jkw@kodak.com (Jerry K. Wagner Internet: jkw@kodak.com) (03/20/91)
> In TELECOM Digest V11 #210, John Higdon writes: > What is interesting is the order in which the services were restored... > As it turned out, telephone service was restored by late afternoon, > about twenty-four hours after the outage began. Not very impressive. If you lived in Rochester Tel land, you would most likely consider 24 hours to be impressive. Since I moved to my current address, I have had at least two unexplained service interruptions (not-storm or disaster related) and it took at least two days for each one to be fixed. During the recent ice storm, I lost service on March 4. I called Rochester Tel that afternoon and was told my phone would be fixed by 9 PM on March 6. I certainly didn't believe that! On March 12, I called again. The phone company would not give me any idea when the repair people would be in my neighborhood. (Meanwhile, Rochester Gas and Electric was being told by the county government to at least give people an estimate.) I called Rochester Tel again on March 16 and I was told the repair people were going street by street and no estimate was given. Later that day, we found New York Telephone people down the street who were going house-to-house to repair services. These repair people hadn't even been given a list of people who didn't have service, so we gave them my address and asked them to be sure to stop at our house. > So it breaks down like this: > The cable company had its act together. Its service restoral (while > hardly essential) was first rate. PG&E took three hours to restore > service. PG&E is probably the worst electric utility on the planet so > for them it was probably miraculous. Never mind that the fire was > originally started by primary wires arcing in the trees because PG&E > felt it unnecessary to do any trimming. But wiping up the rear was > Pac*Bell, who was too wimpy to even begin work on its cable until the > next day. I disagree with the use of the term "wimpy." PG&E personnel are trained and equipped to work with high voltage equipment and the phone company is not. If the trees were arcing, there could have been other damage to the equipment, such as broken insulators and broken high-voltage wires. I can't blame the phone company personnel for not wanting to be exposed to foreign voltages on their equipment until PG&E got their problems solved.
davidb@pacer.uucp (David Barts) (03/21/91)
John Higdon writes of a situation where he lost three utilities and cable TV was the first to be restored. I certainly envy his cable TV service. My experience with cable TV in three communities (Los Alamos, NM; Logan, UT; Prosser, WA) has been that: a) if an event causes only one utility to fail, it's cable; b) if multiple utilities fail, cable goes out first and gets restored last. The cable companies also seem to be much less eager for my business than other utilities. When I request electric, phone, water, and cable TV service at a new residence, three calls end up with "Very well, sir, your service will be automatically turned on by <such-and-such time> on <such-and-such date>.", and one call ends up "Please pick a day where you can be at home within a four hour window next week and wait for our serviceman." Guess which one is the cable TV service rep. (Yes, this is for a residence that is already wired for cable.) I know of only one utility where the lines from the power pole are casually draped across the yard like a carelessly-tossed extension cord and left that way for years waiting to be buried or properly installed. Guess which one. Only one utility has answered the phone with a recording saying "Leave your name, phone number, and address, and service will be restored the next business day." when I had to report an outage over a weekend. Guess which one. And then the CATV companies talk about providing local dial tone. From what I've seen in the quality of CATV service, the LEC's don't have much to worry about from these prospective competitors. (John Higdon's case seems to be an exception.) In case you're wondering: No, I haven't bothered to sign up for cable at my current residence. And I don't intend to. [Moderator's Note: Likewise, at my house, we do not have cable. The service in Chicago stinks, and anyway, with 12 over the air channels why should I bother paying for more grief? PAT]
ellisond@uunet.uu.net (Dell H. Ellison) (03/26/91)
> [Moderator's Note: Likewise, at my house, we do not have cable. The > service in Chicago stinks, and anyway, with 12 over the air channels > why should I bother paying for more grief? PAT] Yes. Why bother when we get so many channels over the air? And it sure will be great when they have fiber optic cable installed to every home and then we can receive video through our 'phone lines'. (I don't know how soon that will be.) I wonder what happened to that field trial of exactly that down in Cerritos, California. Anybody know? Dell Ellison