North Coventry Township Station 64 Fire Engine - Ready to Respond to Comcast Mishaps Anytime

“I called Comcast because I wanted the kitchen TV hooked up to cable,” she said, describing how the digital TV converter box hadn’t worked as planned. “They said no problem, we can do it, no extra charge.” Tyson was already a Comcast subscriber before the incident Monday.

“They drilled right into the electrical box,” Tyson said in disbelief, looking over at the side of her home where a long black burn mark extended up to the roof from a burnt electrical box and meter.

Verizon must be enjoying the irony.  Just a few days ago, we shared with you the ad that Comcast was running in Pennsylvania showing reckless Verizon FiOS installers tearing up yards and engaging in what can only be described as ‘dangerous antics’ by the telephone company’s installers.  Verizon wants those ads pulled for being out of bounds.

After The Mercury published an article detailing one 83 year old North Coventry woman’s plight (her house is now uninhabitable), Comcast may have to yank the ad just to save face.

Tyson, who was in her house while the cable man worked outside, said she heard “two loud blasts — ‘Boom, Boom’ — then I came out of the house to see what was going on.”

“It was burning like mad,” she said, when the serviceman ran up to her and asked if she had a fire extinguisher, which lay spent on Tyson’s front lawn as fire crews worked.

Tyson may have been lucky as fire officials found the arcing had sparked a fire in wood behind the electrical box in the basement which spread to the floor joists. But the majority of damage was to the electrical system.

“The house is not liveable until the electric is redone,” Schaeffer said. There also was no water for the home since the well pump won’t work without electricity, according to officials.

Jean Tyson’s home sustained approximately $20,000 in damage.  She, and her dog, are now staying at a neighbor’s home until repairs can be completed.

If North Coventry was wired for Verizon FiOS, they should be swooping in to offer her a free Verizon FiOS account, thus proving yet again that payback is a ….

To punish Comcast for being naughty, we bring you one additional FiOS ad, pointed out by our reader Smith6612, featuring Michael Bay.  It’s definitely worth the entertainment value:

Thanks to Broadband Reports for calling our attention to this story.

Wallstrip condenses the entire bandwidth capping is a bad idea argument down to a few irreverent minutes and this:

Pretty soon we’ll all be over our 40GB limit.

From time to time, I am going to go off topic a moment with something I find ironic or amusing and completely besides the point.  If you’re filled with the anger about usage caps, this is your place to take a deep breath and let it out.

One of my side interests is collecting older clips from radio and television.  Recalling when cable television was run by mom and pop cable companies who dutifully brought in those “superstations” we all wanted to see, one of them was WOR from New York (later WWOR from Secaucus, NJ).  While browsing around the Interweb Tubes, I ran into a promo for The John Davidson Show.  Now, for those “too young” to remember, Davidson and his hair were staples on network television variety shows, game shows, and anything that had an “all star cast” in it.  That could range from The Love Boat to “a major motion picture made especially for television;” the man was not hard to find.

What was hard to believe was that WOR was running these ads for his show claiming he was the most “provocative” talk show host on television.  Well, perhaps then.  But chairs were never thrown and hair was never yanked out on his program.  This was the era of Gary Collins on Hour Magazine after all.  The only thing controversial I ever recall Davidson doing was in 1974 when he turned up as a guest star in the Streets of San Francisco, as a cross-dressing lounge singer who killed his fans while in drag.

Plus, there has never been anything provocative about Bert Convy either, who turns up as a guest in the clip.  Trivia question, who is the other guest in this clip?

If you are 40ish, you’ll remember the big flying “9.”

Taking a moment to return to the bandwidth battles of days gone by, here’s another commercial from Pacific Bell about how cable is rationing their bandwidth.   Today, it’s a whole new battle with a fictional war based on a whole different kind of fictional intelligence: “a bandwidth crisis” that will lead to America running completely out of Internet bandwidth if we don’t cap everyone today.   No independent verification.   No independent evidence.   Just a lobbying firm in Washington, a bunch of equipment manufacturers who stand to make a pile of cash selling the equipment to keep everyone on a bandwidth diet, and happy shareholders who don’t have to worry about telecommunications companies making practical investments to keep their networks on track to grow with the rest of the Internet.   It’s quicker and easier to call you a bandwidth hog – log off now!

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The cable industry used to face the wrath of DSL companies who ran very effective advertising telling people that cable modem users were all sharing the same bandwidth and slowing down the network for everyone.   They’ve used enough Internet – log off now!   The cable industry’s proposal to start capping usage opened a unique opportunity for DSL providers to finally get some competitive advantage.   Hampered by an aging network, slower speeds, and less ability to rapidly increase speeds, DSL has tried to compete on price.   Imagine if the telephone companies saw cable caps and tailored ads like this to their cable competitors, telling families they’ve used too much Internet and they’d better log off or else.

But telephone companies always take the opportunity to miss a great opportunity and, in the case of Frontier, have elected to one-up them with a cap so low that dial-up users could consume more bandwidth.

So let’s take a look back to the good old days, when the Internet was our friend, and DSL was a noble competitor in the broadband marketplace.