Telecom Rollouts Raise Ire Over Utility Boxes 284
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."
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.
Re:They have to go somewhere? (Score:5, Insightful)
waah waah! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:They have to go somewhere? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Easement (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like we've moved from NIMBY to BANANA (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Wow, those are ugly (Score:1, Insightful)
... must cover markings within 48 hours or face fine, etc.
Well, that's how to get rid of those boxes. Break out the spray paint.
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.
Re:Bury them ... and they'll fill up with water (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.
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.
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.
Re:These things are really huge (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% higher. All this with no benefit to the utility. The question then becomes can the service be provided at a price point that it will have a return on investment?
Designing more compact boxes is great... but if it means you have to piss off 20x more people, what is the better solution?
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: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.
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?
Re:Backup batteries belong in central facilities (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It isn't "fast internet" or "no internet" (Score:2, Insightful)