“Dealing with Mediacom is like stepping on a mound of fire ants,” says June Watts, a Mediacom customer in Alabama. “You are going to get stung no matter what you do.”

Watts is one of many unhappy Mediacom customers that once again bottom-rated the cable company into last place in Consumer Reports annual survey of telecommunications providers. In every case, Mediacom scored the worst or nearly the worst on bundled services, Internet, phone, television, service quality, and pricing.

“Missing channels, stuck channels, inconsistent Internet speeds, Internet and phone outages, boxes that won’t stay authorized, and wait times up to 45 minutes to get them on the phone are all part of my experience with them,” Watts tells Stop the Cap! “It never gets better because once they fix one thing something else breaks.”

Mediacom’s customer service forums offer some clues about what makes Mediacom such a problem for its customers. “Cyberpunk 1161” pays for 100/20Mbps service but is lucky to get 10% of that speed on a good day. He started corresponding about his speed issues with Mediacom’s social media team on Feb. 19. He is still having issues as of June 2, nearly four months later, and his conversation with Mediacom has now extended to 15 pages. “WhiteBengal50” has already managed three pages of complaints starting on May 18. Another customer spent one year and four months with his cable line left unburied on his lawn.

“They run a poorly maintained operation in mostly rural communities larger companies don’t want to deal with,” said Jerry Butler, a Mediacom customer in Iowa. “They are trying to keep up with larger operators but they have not invested nearly enough in reliability, which alienates customers with regular service outages and ongoing technical issues.”

Butler notes he can buy 100Mbps broadband service from Mediacom, but he won’t actually see 100Mbps speeds because the cable infrastructure between him and the cable office has deteriorated over the years.

“They need new overhead cable on their poles but they won’t spend the money to do it,” Butler said. “Cable operators should be budgeting to replace system components approaching their expected end of life instead of waiting for them to fail. They could also use more monitoring tools to find deteriorating infrastructure and replace it before it fails.”

Charter Cable customers in Mesa County, Col., experiencing the latest service outage from the cable company were told to “quit whining” and “check your attitude” when they called Charter’s customer service line to ask when the problems would be fixed.

“If Mesa County didn’t whine so much, maybe something would be done,” one Charter representative told a customer in Grand Junction.

“Talking to [Charter] is like trying to put socks on an octopus,” said Dillard Jenkins.

Stop the Cap! reader June Jones found that to be true when she complained to Charter about not being able to reach 911 on her Charter phone during the recent outage.

“I was unhappy after the representative literally told me ‘that’s not our problem, get a cell phone like everyone else’,” Jones said. “I was so shocked being talked to that way I didn’t know what to say. I am 76 years old and in all my life I have never heard a company use that tone with me. The next thing I heard was, ‘is there anything else? I didn’t think so’ and she just hung up.”

Alex Danders waited on hold 35 minutes to speak to a representative about the Charter Internet outage at his business. He later wish he hadn’t.

“All I wanted to know is if they knew when it was going to be fixed and the guy told me ‘to check my attitude’ and later told me to ‘go screw yourself’ and disconnected me,” said Rodriguez.

Charlotte Conboy is a Charter customer who has had trouble with Charter for the last six months. Her two home-based businesses have suffered from no Internet access during frequent outages.

“If […] their company [had] issues [affecting their offices], they would have it fixed right away” said Conboy. “They say that’s beside the point and I get hung up on.”

A county official calling to find out when repairs would be completed was told, “we have excellent service and do not appreciate your complaint for one incident of interruption of service.”

The latest outage took out Internet service for schools across Mesa County for several hours two days in a row. Teachers scrambled to change their lesson plans to work around the outages.

“I’ll tell you the last couple of weeks the last three weeks or so I’ve been out talking to people, they’re furious, people are upset I mean this is our primary communications,” commissioner Scott McInnis told KKCO. “In exchange for using the right of way we expect them to deliver a service that the reasonable person would say ‘hey the quality of this service is good’ and we expect that [they will] deliver that.”

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KKCO Grand Junction County Commissioners get involved with Charter issues 1-15-15.flv[/flv]

KKCO in Grand Junction reports that hundreds of area residents are outraged about ongoing problems with Charter Cable and the rude responses they get when they call Charter’s customer service line. (3:23)

The ongoing problems with Charter Cable and the company’s surly responses to customers prompted a stern letter from the Mesa County Board of Commissioners to Charter Communication’s senior manager of Government Relations. They plan to meet with senior Charter officials today to discuss the matter.

Dear Mr. Rasmussen;

Today we have received multiple complaints from businesses and residents of Mesa County regarding interruption of Charter’s Cable Service. Currently, District 51 Schools are without service and we have been informed that service has been down for several hours.

Please note that this is unacceptable for Charter subscribers who feel that they can go to no one for resolution. When calling the customer service line they are told multiple ‘reasons’ for the outage, including responses such as ‘we have excellent service and do not appreciate your complaint for one incident of interruption of service,’ and ‘If Mesa County didn’t whine so much, maybe something would be done.’

Timely resolution of this issue would be prudent. We are requesting immediate and prompt dispatch of a response team to fix the system post haste; as well as a heightened awareness of the frustration Mesa County subscribers are having with your Customer Service Department. Good faith compliance is implied with the franchise agreement. We have also been informed by the City of Grand Junction that they have also heard from frustrated citizens regarding this issue.

Sincerely,
Mesa County Board of Commissioners
Rose Pugliese, Chair
John Justman
Scott McInnis

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KKCO Grand Junction School district loses phones and internet again 1-16-15.flv[/flv]

The entire Mesa County school district lost Internet access for a second day after another Charter Cable outage. KKCO reports parents and staff are concerned. (3:08)

 Thanks to reader June Jones for tipping us about this story.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich is threatening to veto the state’s Agriculture Bill if it reaches his desk with telecom deregulation inserted as an amendment.

AT&T’s lobbyists in Ohio have convinced state legislators to ignore a veto threat from the governor’s office and insert a deregulation amendment into an unrelated water quality and agriculture measure.

Retiring House Speaker Bill Batchelder (R-Medina) is shepherding AT&T’s latest attempt at total deregulation through the Ohio House of Representatives, claiming it will break down barriers for businesses in Ohio and give new businesses the infrastructure they need to make Ohio their home. Among Batchelder’s top donors is AT&T.

Critics contend the measure will disconnect up to 5% of rural Ohio from all telephone service because they live in “no signal bar” areas of the state.

The amendment, inserted into HB490 (at Sec. 4905.71), would end AT&T’s requirement to serve as a Provider of Last Resort, which has guaranteed that every Ohio resident seeking telephone service has had it for nearly 100 years. If the measure passes, AT&T can unilaterally disconnect service and leave unprofitable service areas, mostly in rural and poor sections of the state. Current Ohio law only permits a telephone company to end service if it can prove financial hardship and show that reasonable alternatives are available to affected residents. AT&T earned $128.75 billion in revenue in 2013 and is unlikely to meet any hardship test.

Although AT&T is unlikely to stop service in suburban and urban areas, ratepayers across the state would lose oversight protections from lengthy service outages, unreasonable billing standards and credit requirements, the ability to quickly connect or disconnect service and access to important low-income programs like Lifeline. Rural customers could be forced away from traditional landline and DSL service in favor of AT&T’s wireless network, which costs considerably more.

Current AT&T customers in Ohio can subscribe to landline service for around $20 a month in rural areas and broadband DSL for as little as $15 per month. AT&T’s wireless alternative costs $20 a month for voice service and at least $60 a month for wireless broadband (with a usage cap of 10GB per month and an overlimit fee of $10 per gigabyte). An average landline customer consuming 20GB of data would pay $35 a month for both voice and data services. The same customer using AT&T’s wireless voice and data alternative would pay $180 a month, mostly in overlimit penalties.

AT&T’s lobbying has riled Ohio’s Republican governor, John Kasich, who has threatened to veto any agriculture bill that reaches his desk with telephone deregulation attached.

“The telecommunications language will force the governor to veto this bill, as he has personally said and has also been repeated several times by other members of the administration,” Jim Zehringer, director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources told the Ohio Senate’s Agriculture Committee during an informal hearing on the legislation. “We would be sacrificing all the great work done so far on this bill if these provisions are not removed.”

The AARP is concerned the measure will not only hurt rural Ohio, but elderly and poor residents who cannot afford wireless service.

“They will only have wireless telephone service with no price controls or guarantees for low-income Ohioans in these areas,” AARP Ohio wrote in a released statement about the proposal. “Additionally, there are areas of Ohio where wireless service is minimal, and to provide the speed needed for those receiving tele-health services in those areas will be even more expensive.”

Interested Ohio residents can share their feelings with their state legislators and the governor’s office.

• Locate your Ohio House Representative: http://www.ohiohouse.gov/ or call 1-800-282-0253 and ask to be connected to your local representative.
• Governor John Kasich’s Office Phone: (614) 466-3555

Odorous House Ants in splice tray (Image: Rainbow Tech)

Ants going about their daily routine have grown increasingly frustrated with the presence of underground optical cables and other telecommunications equipment including lawn pedestals and terminating boxes and have become a growing problem for telecom companies that can blame local outages on their activities.

In the last month, Frontier, Windstream, AT&T, and Verizon all suffered outages directly attributed to insect activity. In most cases, the damage is unintentional — the insects use enclosed spaces like lawn pedestals and equipment cabinets as a handy home. Material brought into the colony can overheat equipment when it blocks air vents, increased moisture from the insects can corrode or compromise sensitive electronics, and insect attempts to push wiring out of the way can ruin optical cables.

Stop the Cap! reader Geoff Fielder found his entire neighborhood missing U-verse service last month and learned ants had infested the neighborhood’s fiber-copper junction box and corroded some of the equipment contained inside.

“When the technician opened the box, half the neighborhood could hear him screaming,” Fletcher said. “He made it quite plain he didn’t like ants. His partner arrived with a spray can in hand and knocked down most of them and encouraged the others to retreat. The damage was significant and they were surprised it happened so quickly because AT&T technicians tend to visit equipment boxes regularly when they connect new customers.”

It took most of the afternoon to repair the damage and bring the neighborhood back online.

Earlier this summer, Verizon FiOS user Paul McNamara, news editor of Network World, reported ants had destroyed the fiber optic cable bringing him service. Five years earlier, ants caused havoc when they colonized a utility junction box on a pole across the street. In both cases, they brought Verizon’s fiber network to its knees for McNamara.

“When the Verizon technician opened the box it was filled with hundreds of ants (I had actually forgotten about the earlier ant episode, but he clearly expected them to be there),” McNamara wrote in a blog post. “And when he shooed away enough of the critters to get a look inside, the red glow of a stripped fiber optic cable was clearly visible.”

The technician believed the ants were attracted to a liquid jelly used inside the cable’s casing.

Ant damage to an optical fiber cable (Image: Draka)

Draka, an optical fiber supplier dealing with complaints about insect damage, reports the ants it encounters are not seeking out optical cables. They just don’t appreciate when those cables get in their way.

The company ran test ant farms where they intentionally placed optical fiber cables in proximity to the colonizing ants. They were relieved to discover the ants didn’t target their brand of cable specifically — they attacked them all equally. This problem may require expert assistance; contact Marietta OH pest control companies to help you.

“Fibers from all four suppliers were found to be damaged by the activities of the ants in the farms,” Draka wrote in its study. “The ants did not preferentially attack Draka fiber in the competitor fiber farms, but rather they did damage to fibers from all vendors.”

Some ant species are less tolerant of cables than others. Among the nastiest are the Red, Western, and California Harvester Ants, found mostly west of the Mississippi. They dig ant galleries as deep as nine feet and have little tolerance for any underground cables they meet.

“It was concluded that the harvester ants often attempt to push aside any optical fiber they encounter if the fiber is in the way of their work,” Draka reported. “It was observed that they sometimes moved the fibers when they were in the way, but they were not seen trying to eat the coating or attacking the fiber.”

They needn’t do either to cause damage. The body parts they use to shove cables aside are capable of creating significant damage, starting with stripping the color off the cable and eventually destroying insulation straight down to the glass fiber itself.

Other ant species are also capable of causing indirect damage by their presence. Ant waste is often corrosive and a long-established colony can do significant damage to equipment cabinets.

The neighborhood bad boy, ready to chew.

Technicians assigned to dealing with insect-related outages encounter more than just ants, however. These insects often set up home inside little-accessed boxes:

• Black Widow Spiders
• Brown Recluse Spiders
• Crickets
• Fleas
• Millipedes
• Roaches
• Scorpions
• Silverfish
• Sowbugs
• Ticks
• Waterbugs

Rainbow Technology, a major supplier of insect and rodent control measures to utility companies, says a fast response can make a real difference. Rainbow said the worst offenders are five types of ants that have a bad reputation with utility companies: harvester ants, odorous house ants, Argentine ants, carpenter ants and fire ants. They have been implicated in service outages in California, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Texas.

Rodents, especially squirrels, also remain constant hazards everywhere – especially to overhead wiring. They need to wear down constantly growing teeth and utility cables are a perennial favorite. They typically stop gnawing after the insulation has been stripped off cable television or telephone wiring. They will stop gnawing for a different reason if they chew on electrical cables. So for those who want to banish them in their vicinity, they can now do so thanks to services like animal control.

Late last week, hundreds of thousands of PlayStation Network users subscribed to Time Warner Cable broadband found their game play interrupted by an “outage” that turned out to be a misconfigured domain name service (DNS) update. Whether Sony was responsible for sending bad data or Time Warner Cable had problems properly integrating the changes, gamers were out of luck for hours Friday until a corrected update could be distributed.

The service outage affected customers relying on Time Warner Cable’s own DNS servers. Customers that dropped Time Warner Cable and their DNS provider were back in business almost immediately. Knowing how to get the best Minecraft Servers could be useful for a gamer.

Broadband customers need not rely on the domain name service offered by your provider. Both Google and OpenDNS offer more robust alternatives, and you can make the switch in seconds.

PlayStation Network users: change your PS3 or PS4 Internet connection setting to manual, changing only the DNS server information.

Everyone else: Check your router manual for the address of the configuration menu.

Choose any two out of these four DNS addresses for your primary and secondary entries:

• Google: 8.8.8.8 and/or 8.8.4.4
• OpenDNS: 208.67.222.222 and/or 208.67.220.220