Infrastructure

I’m pleased that I was able to convince Comcast to remove the dangling 1-foot chunk of old utility pole from my street this week. A neighbor pointed out last weekend that the rope holding it up was fraying, and asked if I knew who to call.

The power company is responsible for the pole itself, and each utility is responsible for connecting and disconnecting their cables to the pole. The power company can install a new pole, but they cannot move the other company’s services from the old pole to the new pole. Nobody takes responsibility for coordinating between the power company and the other utilities, so we end up with lots of doubled-up poles. In this case, Comcast was the only company with cables still attached to the old pole segment 15 feet off the ground. 5 days, 7 Comcast reps, and 2.5 hours on the phone later, it was becoming clear why my neighbor had sounded so frustrated.

On Thursday I finally reached a live person at Comcast Executive Customer Care, the only folks at Comcast who appear interested in resolving the problem rather than resolving the phone call. In 3 hours, my street was filled with Comcast vans. If you were unable to get a Comcast technician to respond to a trouble report on Thursday afternoon, that’s because I was collecting the whole set.