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Telecom Rollouts Raise Ire Over Utility Boxes
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sat Aug 23, 2008 08:21 AM
from the price-of-progress dept.
from the price-of-progress dept.
Anti-Globalism points out this AP story, which notes:
"As cable and phone companies race to upgrade services or offer video for the first time, they're doing it by installing equipment in boxes on lawns, easements and curbs all over American neighborhoods. Telecommunications rollouts have always been messy, but several towns and residents are fighting back with cries of 'Not in my front yard!' AT&T Inc.'s nearly fridge-sized units, which route its new U-verse video product to customers, are drawing particular ire. A few caught fire or even exploded. AT&T said it has fixed that by replacing the units' backup batteries."
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Caught fire? (Score:5, Funny)
A few caught fire or even exploded.
It's obviously the fault of the filesharers. All those bits streaming through the equipment at the same time as video and legitimate Internet usage cause friction, see, and that caused the boxes to catch fire. Yet another arguement against the evil pirates!
Re:Community Planning 101 (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yep. The first one was actually placed by a church as part of their "getting the word out" I thought.
They just sold the interior out to make some money.
Any idea when the latter two were installed? I always wondered about those two.
Cell towers (Score:3, Insightful)
My biggest complaint is against cell towers with blinding strobe lights on top. So bright that you can see them from ten miles away on a sunny day. Two or three of those can kind of ruin an otherwise scenic vista. (I'm looking at you, Michigan.)
The best solution I've seen is to disguise the towers as pine trees. It just takes a few branches, and the technology has been perfected since the 1950's.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This must be a flatlander problem... around these parts, cell "towers" are often on sides of buildings [renowirelessinfo.com] or tiny towers on the sides of mountains [renowirelessinfo.com]. Of course, we do have the ugly-ass "tree" towers [renowirelessinfo.com].
Re:Community Planning 101 (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe something like painting the utility boxes to make them be more like art than the boring single white/gray color they have.
Example 1: City of Surrey, BC [surrey.ca]
Example 2: San Diego [apf1.org]
And don't forget that many towns do have local artists. Using the utility boxes for nice art (work-safe imagery only please!) would be something that can take the edge of people and make them forget to be annoyed by the item itself.
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oblig. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You must be new here
Re:oblig. (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:oblig. (Score:5, Funny)
I don't see what the problem is. My neighbor has one in his yard, and I don't mind at all.
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Looks (Score:5, Funny)
Who cares how it looks outside. When you have enough Television and a fast enough internet connection you don't need to go outside.
Wow, those are ugly (Score:5, Funny)
And you'd think AT&T could hire better graffiti artists to decorate [yahoo.com] the damn things.
Lazy, Cheap, or Indifferent (Score:5, Insightful)
AT&T really has no excuse. Here in Las Vegas there are dozens of cell phone towers that really look like palm trees. All it takes is a little effort to camouflage these boxes and place them with a little more intelligence.
That picture is one ugly job. A little landscaping, fencing, whatever would solve 90% of their problem. Considering how much those boxes cost with their contents you would think a few thousand dollars each for cosmetics would be a drop in the bucket.
DRGAF (Score:3, Informative)
I've worked with many tech folks from (insert name of big telecom company here) ranging from the engineers who architected the systems down to the grunts who actually perform the installation of the hardware on-site. From the top to the bottom, they mostly tend to all operate on the DRGAF (Don't Really Give A F*ck) principle.
Oh, and also anytime their equipment or cabling fails or malfunctions, it's always the end-customers or the customers' equipment at fault. The telecom company's equipment always "tests
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The telecom company's equipment always "tests good from their end", even when smoke is pouring out their fibermux cabinet.
One of the guys I work with recently called the local cable Internet provider to troubleshoot his connection. The cable provider called back a little while later to report that "everything looked okay with their equipment -- [the tech] ran all of the diagnostic tests and could see the cable modem, etc." The only problem -- my friend called from work, after having shut off his cable modem before he left his house that morning. In other words, all of the blathering about everything looking fine
waah waah! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:waah waah! (Score:4, Insightful)
I think they just want AT&T to do a better job at hiding the equipment. Or placing them in less-annoying locations, instead of in the middle of someones front lawn.
People have been hiding electronics for years, and there really isn't any excuse for this other than cost. I bet if you dig far enough into the company, you'll find that someone did a cost analysis showing that it's cheaper to take the bad PR from those that complain than it is to put money into hiding these from the start.
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These things are really huge (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who just had one of these installed at the end of our block, I can attest to the size and noise of the things. They are about twice the size of a standard telephone box, with a footprint of about 5'x5'x5'. They are actively cooled, so you can always hear the fan churning away. They also have diagnostic leds on the outside, so in the middle of the night, you can still see their ugliness.
Unfortunately, the volume of these things makes it impractical to hang them from a utility pole and the need for maintenance and cooling precludes burying them.
The real shame is that the one in my neighborhood got installed on someone's easement, meaning that she's now responsible for mowing around the damn thing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretend you could put this equipment in a concrete vault. If the box is a 5' cube above ground, you are looking at a minimum of a 10' x 8' x 8' excavation to build a vault and bury it. It will need a 6' x 6' access hatch for future equipment replacement.
Underground utilities are hard work. Finding that big of a space clear in many areas is a huge challenge; the planning effort alone is easily doubled, and the installation cost is at least 10x. On top of all that, the operating cost is at least 50% highe
you get what you pay for (Score:5, Insightful)
People put up with telegraph poles and electricity pylons for the benefits (electric power and telephones). If you want your broadband and services at rock-bottom prices, you can't expect the utilities to shell-out for NIMBY-approved landscaping.
According to the article, only a few boxes are fridge-sized, most are much smaller. Give it a year ot two and they'll be covered in bushes, to disguise the fact that the residents want all the up-to-date services they offer.
Bury them (Score:4, Interesting)
These structures are going to be in place for decades to come.
It certainly costs more to bury them but there's a very good reason that almost every new housing development chooses to bury [irvinehousingblog.com] utilities rather than display them.
In the long run, older neighborhoods will elect to bury the unsightly mess so it doesn't make sense to muck up an existing neighborhood for a short term cost savings.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They need service access so they can't be sealed solid - some kind of service hatch/door will be a must. Obviously they'd have seals, but these perish and water will get in.
Gimme a break. The phone companies have been burying copper POTS for 100 years without serious water damage issues. See, the trick is, you don't put the equipment rack directly under the manhole cover, and you include a sump pump. Granted, you clearly couldn't think of that, but I guarantee that AT&T has.
Looks like we've moved from NIMBY to BANANA (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What if they offered their services free of charge in exchange for the box on your grass?
Re:Looks like we've moved from NIMBY to BANANA (Score:5, Insightful)
What if they offered their services free of charge in exchange for the box on your grass?
Lifetime internet/VOD/cableTV/phone service in exchange for a box on my lawn? Fuck, I'd be out there pouring the ugly concrete pad myself. But see, that's the whole goddamn point isn't it. They're using municipal easements to crap up people's front yards with nether their consent, nor their input, nor any reimbursement.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I actually rejected purchase on a newly built house for a reason like this.
They neglected to display the fact that there was going to be a monster power transformer in the CENTER of my front lawn, where a tree was supposed to have been according to the contract. ( monster = 3x3x3 )
They waited until the house was almost finished then stuck it in and claimed they didn't have to tell me about any easements or changes in the plot. I threatened to sue them under breach of contract as i waved the plot plan in th
Make up your mind /. (Score:5, Interesting)
Lamenting the sad state of broadband in the US (http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/13/1648211 [slashdot.org]) is a common theme here, so you'd think we'd be gung-ho for any utility to start installing new gear. Instead, we get complaints that the new gear is ugly and that telcos don't want to negotiate a different standard with every little town. I hope we can at least agree that it's logical for the telcos to want one standard per state, at least for the sanity of their installer techs. I'm not objecting to making that standard rigorous, just so long as there's only one of them.
Personal experience, our town (Waltham, MA) was among the first to get FIOS strung up everywhere. It sits on the utility poles, which now carry power, copper, coaxial and fiber. It's not the prettiest set up in the world, but it's really not that bad. I used to live in a suburb that buried all our cables, which was considerably prettier. It also means that they aren't going to get fiber (installation costs aren't justified) and when there was an outage, it took weeks to get it resolved. I much prefer the uglier solution.
Re:Make up your mind /. (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead, we get complaints that the new gear is ugly and that telcos don't want to negotiate a different standard with every little town. I hope we can at least agree that it's logical for the telcos to want one standard per state, at least for the sanity of their installer techs. I'm not objecting to making that standard rigorous, just so long as there's only one of them.
Sorry, but why exactly should the citizens of various local governments give up their right to determine standards for their community? To make it easier for a telephone company to turn a profit?
Boo hoo, I say. Large businesses consistently complain that following local rules is too complicated. I call bullshit.
There are some issues where it makes sense to have a statewide consensus - medical licenses, law licenses, etc. What is visually acceptable in a given community is not one of those issues. Maybe the folks in town X are fine with boxes on the street, but if the folks in town Y aren't, the telco has a choice: abide by their rules, attempt to convince them to change their rules, or don't run service there. Trying to go over local governments' heads at the state level is just lazy.
Besides, you can bet the lobbyists will be out in force to make sure those state regulations are awfully lax. It'll be much harder to do that on a local level.
And then what? The telco will eventually end up complaining that managing different standards over a dozen or 48 states is too complicated, and there should be a national standard (think car manufacturers). We already see this sort of consolidation happening with IP law - attempts to unify disparate national laws into a consistent worldwide whole that fails to take into account local differences. You can kiss federalism goodbye.
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Well, you have some choices: (Score:4, Interesting)
* Charge them rent for the use of your property, sending an invoice monthly. When they don't pay (who knows? a big enough A/P department might), report them to the credit bureaus. When they raise a stink about having to deal with that, offer to sell them the small patch of property for whatever the going rate is per-square-foot in your locale and maybe add a bit of padding for negotiations room.
* Use that spot to build your brand new compost pile. Build a large wooden box big enough to contain the thing, then keep it filled with manure (and when applicable, the 'dog bombs') and your grass clippings. Claim that the heat it generates is perfect for generating high-grade manure, and that you're only recycling otherwise wasted energy.
* Send them a bill for the years (or even decades) of landscaping (even just mowing) you've had to do in the spot the box now occupies. Also send them a bill for any and all landscaping you've done to hide the damned thing.
* Front Yard? Bolt your mailbox to it. Hell, offer to bolt your neighbors' mailboxes to it.
* Plant a tree next to it... the biggest one Home Depot has. The roots will eventually (within a couple of years) destroy the thing from underneath, and most towns now have 'green laws' that prevent a utility from cutting down or even harming the tree. They move, you win.
* Do what I did... buy a house in the back of a "flag lot" [answers.com] (just pick one with enough land around and in it so you don't feel crowded). No utility easements back here, folks. When Verizon showed up to drop in fiber, the only impact I saw was a long, skinny line of spray-paint at the front of the driveway. the neighbor up front OTOH got a shiny new box in his yard (which explains where a lot of these ideas came from).
burying isn't a good solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Burying them underground isn't a great solution. The "parkway" (strip of land between the sidewalk and the street) in front of my house has a fairly small above-ground utility box for POTS, and the neighbors have some more of the local POTS equipment underground in their parkway. For years now, the phone company has been struggling with flooding of the underground stuff, which often causes multiple-day service outages. (People worry about the reliability of VOIP, but we have Vonage, and have kept on being able to use our phone during all those POTS outages that affected our neighbors.)
The slashdot summary seems a little misleading when it refers to "lawns." The photo in the article, for instance, shows one that's in a concrete strip between the sidewalk and the street. Granted, I wouldn't want something that huge and graffiti-covered in front of my house.
Impediment is selling the service (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the impediment in this case is selling the service to customers and not that the boxes are an eyesore. If the service doesn't sell well AT&T will probably remove the boxes or upgrade the network to accommodate for smaller boxes. In either case, their PR department will lose. I guess it might end up selling well, but its easy as a virtual monopoly to force upgrades on its customers due to phasing out service. If they were selling enough access as it was, there should be no reason to upgrade right away. IMO, 90% of customers don't want more channels and interactive service. They just want TV to work and give them the channels they want.
A few years back I worked in sales for a large Cable company. They were one of the first to roll out the Microsoft based IPTV service. The marketing people thought it was a great idea and started plugging it away to customers. IMO, whatever market surveys they did were really poorly done. The cable company already had rolled out the Digital terminals and they were selling really well. I didn't even have to try. The company tried to market the IPTV service and people didn't think much of it and were confused. The market was really limited and no one bought it. It was phased out and the company really doesn't talk about it much.
I went on the AT&T site to look at this new and "exciting" feature. It really parallels all the problem employer had with the IPTV rollout. Its okay but I don't think customers will buy it unless they're compelled to by removing older service. I just suggest to people that really hate it to either en mass: 1) Call AT&T, tell them to cancel service unless they remove box. Follow through on cancellation. Local cable company will be more than happy to waive install charges. 2) Don't sign up for it. Make AT&T choke on their piece of buy. They have to throw it up and be made the fool for rolling this out.
Oh, and I dealt a lot with pissed off customers who had much smaller boxes than this AT&T one installed on their property. When it took 4 - 6 months to bury the darn things it usually meant cancellation of service and a claims court judgment in their favor. I dare not ask how much this will cost AT&T.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Some neighborhoods...my old one, for instance, have no telephone poles. Everything is underground.
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Yep. Bouncing off someones head would inflict little or no damage to a telegraph pole
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So you've never been to Japan...
In some towns you can barely see the sky between the wires. And it's not for earthquake reason. It's just because of the cost. Some forward thinking towns are now requiring all new wire to be buried. Make more sense against typhoon, safer in case of earthquakes (no fallen power wires) and you can see the sky.
Re:They have to go somewhere? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:They have to go somewhere? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I live in Canada where practically everyone has high-speed access and I've never seen such huge pieces of equipment, anywhere.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
.
Is this an internal contradiction or two warring camps?
The geek may be bitching about access to fiber. His dad may have been the guy who pissed off his neighbors when he installed a 16 foot BUD in the eighties.
You can grow weary and wary of the way tech defines and transforms a landscape.
The high tension lines that bisec
Re:Easement (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Easement (Score:5, Insightful)
You people? Just because I'm unwilling to tolerate an unwelcome liability in my front yard doesn't automatically make me the bad guy ... or does it?
I like the "work with them" part, because they're more than willing to work with me, right? See the Tragedy of the Commons link, above. Lemme expand on the details of the problem. First, the easement doesn't relieve me of property ownership. I'm still obligated to maintain the property in the easement, and I'm still taxed on it because I'm the owner. That's a nifty trick the local utilities got enacted - they don't want to pay property tax on the right-of-way, but they want unfettered access. Nice huh? So anyway, I'm not supposed to dig with power tools within 3 feet of the buried utilities, and I'm not supposed to obstruct the meters. I don't really have any objection to the gas or water access, as I use those utilities. However, my tolerance ends there. I do not have a cable subscription (DirecTV, thankyouverymuch.) Consequently, I have no tolerance of Comcast putting an R2D2 in my front yard. Cable TV is not a necessary municipal utility - gas, electric, water, sewer, and to a lesser extent telephone. Locally, the cable TV companies have been granted regional monopolies. Now they're exercising eminent domain and seizing property from me, for which I receive no benefit nor compensation. Why would I tolerate this?
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It isn't "fast internet" or "no internet" (Score:4, Insightful)
It is simply requiring the telcos to bury their nasty shit like any company that respects the neighborhood it does business in. The only reason they dont bury them is because the local zoning lets them save $50k and plop their volkswagon sized garbage at street level.
The telco is *not* going to say "NO FIOS FOR YOU" if the community demanded they bury these turds. They will just jack the price up by $0.01 and amortize the cost over 20 years.
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Re:It isn't "fast internet" or "no internet" (Score:4, Interesting)
First of all, it's not a VW sized box, it's a 4 by 4 by 2 foot box, which is the size of a smaller refrigerator. Second of all, to bury the box you have a whole different set of problems to deal with; access is harder, drainage becomes a problem, and the hole that they dig to bury the box will be the size of a VW. Plus the access cover will be huge. Then you have to either patch the street, or back fill in the yard, which means that $50k is a low end number.
Now, if the city is smart, has the population density, and can make the budget work, the ideal solution is to build an underground utility system. Then everything is out of sight; but most of these problems are happening out west where everyone has their yard and lives 30 minutes to 2 hours from anything.
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Re:It isn't "fast internet" or "no internet" (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:It isn't "fast internet" or "no internet" (Score:5, Informative)
The telco is *not* going to say "NO FIOS FOR YOU" if the community demanded they bury these turds. They will just jack the price up by $0.01 and amortize the cost over 20 years.
You have no idea how much more expensive it is to bury all that equipment and then to maintain the buried equipment. Think factors, not percent. If the density in the target area is low, the telco would just as well leave the old copper and coax in place. That's what they are doing where my parents live -- low density, buried lines, no new services. Not even uVerse. Just live with your pretty copper and coax.
The cheaper it is to install new services, the faster and more widely deployed those services will be. That's just common sense folks!
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They don't like to bury them for several reasons. I've seen an underground telephone "splice" get flooded and knock out a large chunk of businesses before they could get it pumped out and fixed.
In many towns you see small green boxes jut out of the lawn near the curb, those are also splices.
Also for the larger equipment where it's more than just a splice, it's a bigger deal if it gets wet, and you have to be able to get at it for maintenance. A proper vault in the ground for such a thing would add a lot t
Confusing the issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks for the informative post.
> But IMHO, most residents are unrealistic when they crave services but
> are unwilling to deal with the equipment required to run the services
If the people "craving services" were the only ones getting utility boxes in their yard I'd see your point.
But in this case, monopolist carriers are unilaterally selecting random homes to bear the costs of hosting noisy eyesores, regardless of whether the family is their customer, regardless of the will of the neighborhood and local government.
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