The 'Cable Guy' Now a Network Specialist

Hugh Pickens writes "Amy Chozick reports that cable guys, long depicted as slovenly cranks who dodged growling dogs and tracked mud on the living room carpet, often have backgrounds in engineering and computer science and certifications in network engineering. 'Back in my day, you called the phone company, we hooked it up, gave you a phone book and left,' says Paul Holloway, a 30-year employee of Verizon, which offers phone, Internet, television and home monitoring services through its FiOS fiber optic network. 'These days people are connecting iPhones, Xboxes and 17 other devices in the home.' The surge in high-tech offerings comes at a critical time for cable companies in an increasingly saturated Internet-based market where growth must come from all the extras like high-speed Internet service, home security, digital recording devices and other high-tech upgrades. 'They should really change the name to Time Warner Internet,' says Quirino Madia, a supervisor for Time Warner Cable. 'Nine out of 10 times, that's all people care about.' Despite their enhanced stature and additional responsibilities, technicians haven't benefited much financially. The median hourly income in 2010 for telecommunications equipment installers and repairers was $55,600 annually, up only 0.4 percent from 2008."

Re:Not comcast

[AngryDeuce]

Yeah, my experiences with Charter have been about the same over the last 10 years I've been a customer of theirs. The only time I ever had a tech that seemed like he knew anything (and didn't just try to bullshit me) was recently, and even then it took a problem being escalated to the supervisor's supervisor to get that kind of attention. Turns out the "shitty wiring in the walls that was preventing [me] from getting more than 4 meg that would never be repaired unless the landlord tore all the walls out and rewired the building" was actually a faulty node that was blasting everyone in this complex with so much noise on the lines that anything beyond regular web surfing didn't work for shit (and even that worked like crap during peak, which was always the excuse, "it's peak usage, sorry, nothing can be done". It took a year of complaints from everyone in this complex until they finally investigated and found the problem with the node and, when they replaced/repaired it, holy shit, everything started working again. Imagine that...

If there was any other alternative that offered similar speeds, I would switch, but unfortunately my choice is them or DSL that tops out at 7 meg for the same price. Either way, their Level 3 guy openly admitted that most of the lower level techs know enough to plug the shit in and do basic troubleshooting, but that's about it. However, he did say that 99% of the time the problem is user error related to people not knowing how to plug the shit in or connect to the network, so maybe that's why? Either way, though, I could do without the bullshit answers. I've had the problems blamed on my router more often than I can count (even though that's complete bullshit), and funny, that always segues into trying to get me to rent one from them for $7 a month. Uh, yeah, no thanks...

Re:Not comcast

[vlm]

the other end of the line actually seemed annoyed with having to give up the one piece of info I actually needed

I don't think giving out DNS server IPs is in the script, and going off the script means that rep is going to be disciplined, and they had to exhaust the 15 minute script lest the rep get punished before being able to go off script, which also ruins the rep's required average call time which it probably something like 3 minutes. So you had them between a rock and a hard place, no matter what the rep did, once you called in, that rep is about to get disciplined, and no one likes no win scenarios.

Which at least fits in well with the management strategy of keeping the turnover rate of line employees up to keep benefit costs down.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Not comcast

[nitehawk214]

I always use 8.8.8.8 (one of Google's DNS servers) as an emergency backup when I cannot reach mine.

Also, a lot of linux distros do support DHCP, which is a good way to get the settings before manually configuring. (which may not be an option in your situation)

Network "Specialist"?

[Zeekort]

I used to work in Level3 for a cable company and I can tell you that most of the techs don't even check the RF power levels on the lines half the time. Heck, I've had to send a FOREMAN out just to get someone that would actually unplug a modem to trace a simple RF problem to a splitter and have it fixed in 5 minutes or less. Forget about even expecting them to know how to check the IP address the customer was getting if they can't even take care of an RF issue that "technically" they should be experts in for all the checks they do on the lines for regular TV service all the time.

The fatal flaw of the article is that the techs they mention in it are all foreman level or supervisors. NONE of which are the regular cable techs that we all know and loath. Install techs are also better trained and have higher expectations placed on them so they are (generally) at least a little better than the average tech but still no where near being called a "Specialist" given that many of them still needed one of us to tell them how to put in a wireless key on a MAC or PC.

That being said though, the cable industry itself is changing. Gradually all cable techs will have no choice but to actually learn something or take a hike thanks to the newer technologies coming out (ex DOCSIS Set-top Gateway).