Comcast is an engineering company run by accountants. I understand budgets and I know money is the reason to be in business. But I was around in Comcast and the old Wade/Time Warner systems and heard Mr Roberts speeches where he was crowing about 40 percent profit margins. And the spending on keeping the systems current was non existant.
Typical Comcast, they had a node with over 6000 homes passed on it. They split it up into 4 nodes, still too many by any standard. There was no dark fiber within a 5 mile area. They left virtuall no dark fibers when they did their last upgrade and what they did leave was already in service now. We had to install almost a half mile underground to the three new node locations. Now guess what materials they used after having to build this to just make the nodes support what they needed right then( this is 5 years ago now). We ran 12 count 4 for each node and not 1 dark fiber because that would cost more. And to top it off we used 1 1/4 tamaqua for the duct, try pulling in another piece of anything now. All of this garbage was left over what ever from the previous upgrade just to keep the bean counters happy at the time. How do you think service is in a 1500 home node with voip,vod and high speed .
Comcast and all of the others cant get out of their own way. Not that Verizon is perfect, but when they looked at their system and figured what they needed to keep cutting edge, they had the courage to include lots of extra capacity into it. And we all now the Fios system is not cheap to construct. But once it is done, it is done. Fiber is way more reliable than coax ( how much maints do you think they have to do on the new Fios plant? )They will not have to upgrade anything for a long time to come. The fiber gives them soo much bandwidth per home it is rediculous. How many times have you seen a cable system "rebuild" and have to do another "rebuild 4 or 5 years later. They never actually completely do it. Change out actives and resplice taps is all they are willing to do. Before we left, we were complete rebuilding the system 1 span at a time, all because the accountants could make the books look better expensing it as opposed to a capital expenditure. Until EVERY cable company looks at itself truthfully and steps up and rebuilds to current technology, they are fighting a losing battle.
Sorry for rambling on about this, but doing things stupidly irks me. I know I made more money doing it stupidly, but it doesn't make it right. And now, when the truth is finally getting to them, what happened? Check your rate sheets and see if you can figure it out. Who is paying for this, you or the cable company accountant? I will leave with this, I asked a higher up, I mean a way higher up at Comcast why are we doing this crap like this. And the answer was the accountants at Market St said make it work now and we will make it right later. Genius, pure genius.
Re: comcast v. fios
Member #: 61931
Registered: 9/16/2008
Posted:
963
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Tower Contractor
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PA
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mid 50s
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~37 years
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