Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

In my day, never was longer.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

“woke” is the new caravan.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Come on, man.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

You are here: Home / Economics / Free Markets Solve Everything / The Invisible Fist

The Invisible Fist

by | 188 Comments

This post is in: 

Yesterday, we had a storm in Rochester with 81 MPH gusts. Since our power grid is shit (lots of wires above ground, lots of trees), about 100,000 of the 300,000 or so households here lost power. Our local utility is working hard, but it will be 10 degrees tomorrow night and probably 25-50K households won’t have heat. I have a generator so I have (gas) heat and my food won’t spoil, but I do not have cable Internet. I know that sounds like the ultimate first world problem, but bear with me for a second.

In the past 15-20 years, cable companies have been selling packages that include TV, Internet and telephone. A lot of people purchased those packages, and tonight every single one of them in an area without power is also without a telephone. Even if you have a generator, you don’t have a phone if your phone provider is the cable company. We’re about 30 hours into this outage, so many of the housebound elderly and disabled don’t have much charge left on their cell phones. They’re huddled up under a blanket with no way to call for help, if they bought a cable package with a phone.

I still have a land line and an old-fashioned telephone. It’s working because our legacy telephone infrastructure is subject to the worst imaginable limitation on freedom: government regulation. The cable companies are much less regulated than the phone company, even though they have the same right to string wires on poles (as well as other monopoly rights) as the phone companies.

Over the years, cable companies have slowly but surely vacuumed money out of our wallets without providing quality service. TV bundling forces us to buy channels we don’t want. The speed of our cable Internet is a joke compared to other developed countries, and cable providers don’t deploy the latest technology unless thy are under competitive pressure from providers like Google. And they’re allowed to replace a far more reliable telephone service with one that is flaky at best, and dangerous at worst. This might seem like a minor issue in the days of Trump, but it is one that crosses class, race and gender. Everyone fucking hates the cable company. I’d love to see Democrats make this a signature issue. I get that there are a lot more important things in life, but I’ll bet that we’d get a bunch of votes from otherwise uninterested voters if we become enemies of these greedy bastards.

Reader Interactions

188Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    Maybe. The Dems have been trying for years to get mileage out of net neutrality and it never stuck.

  2. 2.

    James Powell

    @Baud:

    Because the phrase ‘net neutrality’ doesn’t resonate with people who have no idea how & why the big shots want to change things.

  3. 3.

    Steve in the ATL

    Friend of mine from Atlanta is in Rochester on business and her hotel lost power in the windstorm. She was not pleased.

    Meanwhile, I’m sitting in the bar in a hotel in downtown Minneapolis and this Mormon looking dude (white, clean cut, probably mid-thirties) is no shit trying to chat up these two women with tales of the choir directors convention he is attending. To his credit, they have not fled yet. The dude sitting next to him eating kale chips with his IPA is getting no action.

    Yes, I’m bored.

  5. 5.

    kindness

    My land line & cells & dsl are through AT&T. TV is through DISH. Out where I live the cable companies were jacking up their rates so much & so fast I switched over to DISH 10 years ago and I am so thankful. My heart goes out to your neighbors who are less fortunate than you.

    I have a generator but it’s only a 2000W one so it can’t run the whole house. It’d have to come down to fridge the 2 fish tanks & probably the computer & some lights. Gas heat so that wouldn’t matter. I’d probably crack out a couple long extension cords and run ’em through the house.

  7. 7.

    ThresherK

    Snowmageddon, on Halloween in CT, 2011, found us with POTS and it still worked. The situation here was epic on the trees and therefore the aboveground power lines.

    We had no AC, no heat, no stove, for 7 days minus 6 hours, but we did have gas hot water. We were pretty lucky.

    Hope they get things back to normal up there.

  8. 8.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The solution to this is for government to control outside plant (the wires, since they already control the easements) and provide land line infrastructure for the last mile. However, the problem with this is like all government infrastructure; it’s subject to politicians cutting maintenance to the bone because it looks good in budgets to “defer” maintenance to “way down the road”. Which this country has been doing to infrastructure like roads and bridges since the time of Reagan, all for short term political gain. When the shit breaks, it’s much more expensive to repair/replace than the maintenance ever was, but people don’t care, because they don’t have the SLIGHTEST FUCKING IDEA how infrastructure works…they take it for granted and forget that it needs upkeep, and upkeep costs tax dollars, and we must cut taxes to the bone, for reasons.

  9. 9.

    Yarrow

    he speed of our cable Internet is a joke compared to other developed countries,

    Boy, that’s the truth. Not even close to other developed countries.

    @James Powell:

    Because the phrase ‘net neutrality’ doesn’t resonate with people who have no idea how & why the big shots want to change things.

    Agreed. It’s a crappy name for the issue. It needs something a lot easier to understand.

  10. 10.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Baud: Dear Penthouse: I never thought I’d be writing to you, but I was at this Choir Directors convention, and…

  13. 13.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Yarrow:

    It needs something a lot easier to understand.

    “Cable companies are fucking you over and it needs to fucking stop.”

  14. 14.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Baud: I’m assuming they feel safe with him. I’m trying to help him out by leering at the ladies while removing my wedding ring in an exaggerated fashion.

  20. 20.

    Davis X. Machina

    I have a landline and will never give it up voluntarily. Western Electic handset, too. In the exurban part of Maine I live in, power outages longer than a day are a several-times-a-year thing. A week without power — two, three times a decade.

    Those sturdy brick telco headhouses, with those shelves of wet-cell batteries, are the bomb.

  24. 24.

    Another Scott

    It was a very damaging weather system – 857,000 customer sites in Michigan.

    Agreed about the need to finally move utilities underground, but there are still ways to have problems like exploding manholes.

    We’re in NoVA and every 10-20 years have a huge snowstorm where we get 2-3 feet in a week (or less). Our 50 year old subdivision has lots of retirees. It only takes one tree to fall in such circumstances for lots of people who need oxygen deliveries, or home health aid visits, etc., to be in grave danger, because it’s impossible to do repairs until the roads are passable.

    It doesn’t make sense for protected, monopolistic utilities to be free to enter any market they wish. The water company should stay the water company. The electric company should stay the electric company. And the telecommunications company should stay the company that provides the communications wires/fibers/wireless to our homes. They’ve got no business owning commercial TV networks, commercial web sites, amusement parks, and all the rest. Verizon shouldn’t be able to buy Yahoo, Comcast should never have been able to buy NBC/Universal, etc., etc.

    But it would take a major change in attitudes for those decisions to be reversed.

    I don’t think that making Comcast and TW and Verizon and all the rest a major campaign issue is worth the effort. And yes, let’s spend the money to move that stuff underground (along with a commitment to make sure that it is maintained properly). Yes, let’s fix those things when we’re in the majority, but let’s keep our eye on the prize:

    – Voting Rights, Non-partisan Redistricting, and Voting Access
    – Protecting the Constitution and our Federal Government from destruction from within
    – Protecting Access to Health Care and Increasing Social Security benefits (401-Ks have failed)

    etc.

    My $0.02.

    Hang in there!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  25. 25.

    Baud

    Anyway, back to the politics of this, the problem we always encounter is that the other side says that the Dems will cause cable prices to go up even more, and people believe them.

  26. 26.

    Chet Murthy

    @amk: OT, but hey what the heck.

    I -get- that GG and Wikileaks have a lot to answer for, and are at this point objectively baddies. I also get that Snowden has something (less than GG) to answer for, for his conduct prior to the election. But ….

    (a) if Trump hadn’t been elected, he’d look a lot better, wouldn’t he?

    (b) given what happened to other whistleblowers (Drake), it seems reasonable to conclude that his choices were either do what he did, or just shut up.

    I guess what I’m saying is, if we set aside his deplorable public utterances in the run-up to the election, maybe he looks like a man who had to make a decision, and none of the options looked good? As opposed to GG/Assange, whose actions for quite a while now show them to be out-and-out shitheels?

    I’m really -asking- here. Haven’t made up my mind. Really -asking-.

  27. 27.

    efgoldman

    @Yarrow:

    It’s a crappy name for the issue. It needs something a lot easier to understand

    It’s too late. Like all of Coppery Incompetent’s appointments, the new FCC commission head is a fucking asshole and he’s dumping every consumer-friendly action they took for the last eight years, as fast as they can publish the orders. Congress will finish the job.

  30. 30.

    Gin & Tonic

    I have three children, aged between 30 and 35, each living in an urban hellhole. Not a one has a landline or cable TV. None of their friends do, either. Those “cable bundles” are sold only to the olds.

  34. 34.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Good god – that is the worst entertainment EVER.

    Nowhere near as good as me being in a coffee shop across from my office building and watching an attractive 30 something married woman completely eyefuck a younger oblivious man that she works with. That shit was intense….

  35. 35.

    efgoldman

    @Baud:

    I only use cell. The infrastructure is pretty robust.

    And if you can’t plug it in to charge it?

  37. 37.

    Another Scott

    @Chet Murthy: Please don’t turn this into another Snowden thread. We’ve beaten that to death here.

    Do a Google search for “site:balloon-juice.com Snowden” (without the quotes) to find more than you’d ever want to read on the topic.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  42. 42.

    Corner Stone

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Nowhere near as good as me being in a coffee shop across from my office building and watching an attractive 30 something married woman completely eyefuck a younger oblivious man that she works with. That shit was intense….

    Dude, seriously. Spend a few hundred bucks to get past this.

  53. 53.

    Ric Drywell

    I’m a Rochesterisn who has one of those bundled packages, but I don’t actually own a phone (other than my cell). I do have electricity and heat, but no internetbor TV.

    Why the bundle if I don’t use phone? It comes with my apartment. I pay, but it’s steeply discounted.

  54. 54.

    efgoldman

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I have three children, aged between 30 and 35, each living in an urban hellhole. Not a one has a landline or cable TV. None of their friends do, either.

    Yup. My SIL works for a major cable network company and they don’t have cable. They pay Comcast :::spit::: only for ISP service. Their phones are cell only (daughter has a landline for business only, that the business pays for). TV is mostly by Amazon whatsis.

  55. 55.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Yarrow:

    To be fair, as a straight guy at a choir directors’ convention, his odds of getting his pick of women there are really good.

    No criticism, just an observation.

  57. 57.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Corner Stone:

    BTW – I once checked on maxing out sports packages, movies, etc. I could practically lease a Mercedes, and not the shit class.

  58. 58.

    efgoldman

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    How many hours a day do you spend thinking these up?

    You must have missed the other nite when I admitted I have “300 synonyms for orange” bookmarked.

  59. 59.

    jl

    Wikileaks still trying to peddle this comedy act:

    ” WikiLeaks says DNC, Podesta hacks were a “false flag operation” by CIA, designed to undermine President Trump ”
    https://twitter.com/marcushjohnson/status/840038147274739712
    Found via Josh Marshall’s twitter.

    So, I guess Wikileaks is admitting that it sucks, can’t check its own sources?
    And as far as I can tell, losing its influence with the big media (you have to be a real doofus to do that, once your admitted to by the media news divas). I don’t know about others here, but I have not heard any mention of this nonsense in media reports about the new Wikileaks CIA leak. All focus is on spyware that was revealed.

  60. 60.

    mai naem mobile

    @efgoldman: Seriously, ‘Coppery Incompetent’ Initially I was going to tell you to leave copper out of it but maybe you have something there since copper is used for plumbing and has poop and pee going through it like Lumpy does.

  61. 61.

    OldDave

    We still have a good old POTS landline and a DSL internet connection. I often think of ditching the DSL for something faster, but Hurricane Wilma ripped the cable infrastructure apart – it was out for weeks. The phones and DSL kept working, mostly, which made an impression. Power was out for over a week; the big challenge was keeping the reasonably efficient inverter generator happy and fed. Lines at the gas stations that had power were l.o.n.g.

  62. 62.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    @Yarrow:

    “Cable companies are fucking you over and it needs to fucking stop.”

    Yes. But shorter. Like a name or slogan.

    CCAFYOAINTFS

    There. Fits on a bumper sticker and everything.

  65. 65.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Meanwhile, I’m sitting in the bar in a hotel in downtown Minneapolis

    I humbly and politely suggest you change your nym to “Steve NEVER in the ATL.”

  67. 67.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Yarrow:

    She couldn’t get enough of that sweet, sweet choir directors convention talk.

    Probably a gold digger. Those guys make serious coin, right?

    I’m heading back to my room now, but I may tip the bartender so he lets know how this ends!

  69. 69.

    Suzanne

    We have DirecTV because we get a bundling discount with AT&T, who we use for our family wireless plan. I would happily get rid of it, but the rest of the family likes it. They like the DVR. We might go to Sling.

    I just got kicked off on a new building project on Tuesday, and I already have to cut a million dollars from the budget and four months from the schedule.

    I haven’t even drawn the fucking thing yet.

  71. 71.

    Steve in the ATL

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I humbly and politely suggest you change your nym to “Steve NEVER in the ATL.”

    You sound like my wife. Et tu, SD?

    But to your point, Seattle next week, then Denver!

  73. 73.

    Another Scott

    @OldDave: Half-a-dozen homes nearby have hard-wired natural gas powered generators. I’ve thought about getting one for us, but it seems like such a waste in many ways (I’d much rather pay higher rates for a much more reliable electrical system).

    A friend at work had solar panels put on his house in MD a few years ago. That sounds appealing, too, but the way (almost?) all the residential systems work is that they feed back to the main grid. So if the main grid goes down, so does power to your home even if your system is fine. That sucks, bigly. So, then I start thinking about panels and a Tesla PowerWall but those are quite spendy, also too.

    One could pay for a lot of kWh for the cost of a reliable home power system… :-/

    So, we wait, and keep our fingers crossed, and I drag out our portable 5500 W generator if we really need it.

    And of course, none of this helps if the Internet goes down.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  74. 74.

    jacy

    I finally cut the cable cord and canceled the DISH service we’d had forever. I’ve considered going with one of those monthly services (probably Playstation Vue), but just haven’t found the burning need yet. I have enough entertainment through Netflix and Hulu, and will just buy season passes of any programming I can’t live without. Don’t miss it. I mostly consume programming on my cell phone now, occasionally the computer. I haven’t turned on the TV at my house for more than a month.

    We haven’t had a landline in 10 years. When we had no power for a week after Katrina, we had a solar cell phone charger, and also could charge the cell phones in the car.

    I have fiber optic internet — but I had a problem with it last week. (Talk about your bad infrastructure — everything in Baton Rouge is falling to shit), but my cell service through T-Mobile allows me to use my phone as a hotspot for no extra charge, so even though my internet service was down for a week, I was able to keep my computer up and running for work via my cellphone.

    My home also has a whole-home generator. When the power goes out here, the lights flicker, the generator kicks on, and we’re good to go. Having been through several week+ periods of no power due to hurricanes, this is a big deal.

    I think that the cable companies are going to become dinosaurs — my kids (ages 11-28) will never subscribe. It’s not even on their radar. They see no need to pay for something the don’t specifically want. My younger kids have never lived in a house where there’s been a landline. Hell, they might not have ever used a non-cell phone in their lives. I think bundling is not a sustainable model for a future where people want to have very specific things and want literally everything they consume to be ala carte.

  75. 75.

    Seth Owen

    I live in a community served by a municipal power company. We’ve never lost power for more than a few hours, while neighboring communities served by the Big Power Utilty have sometimes lost power for days, even a week.

  76. 76.

    BruceFromOhio

    In 2003, we did the Great Blackout. Kept the landline alive.

    That’s how I contacted my ParentsFromNY after everything else went dark.

    They are ok.

    ETA: Besides POTS, the only other service on right now is 4G LTE. Everything else is dark.

  79. 79.

    Chris T.

    @Seth Owen: Yes, that’s ’cause you have that terrible Government Power. It’s cheaper and more reliable than Free Market Power. That’s why Free Market Power is wonderful, and Government Power is terrible, y’know.

  81. 81.

    andy

    Charter sucked me into that kind of a deal. They even assured me that I would still have a dial tone when the power went out ( a lie, of course). They have a hard hard sell, but they all of a sudden pretend not to know you when there’s a problem.

  82. 82.

    danielx

    Conversing on the phone with my dearly beloved auntie this afternoon, who is 85 years old, sharp as a tack and an unreconstructed FDR Democrat…

    This is more or less verbatim.

    Her: how’s your health these days?
    Me: not too bad, but i have some blood pressure issues.
    Her: me too, i was told at a recent doctor appointment I have to give some things up.
    Me: how’s that?
    Her: cable tv and internet blogs, reading and hearing about Trump is evidently bad for my health.
    Me: there’s a lot of that going around….

  85. 85.

    EricNNY

    I know I live in a hamlet of 100 souls, but donate to your local volunteer fire department. We often are shelter sights for these weather happenings.

  87. 87.

    Another Scott

    @Suzanne: You have my sympathy.

    Where I work, we’ve been going through fire drills, off and on, for close to 10 years now on renovating three+ old buildings that we would move into (so that our existing 50+ year old building can be renovated for another group to move into, musical-chairs style). First go-round, the construction bids on at least part of the project ended up being way over budget. The project started up again around a year ago, and we’re going through the second round design modifications now, and I expect it to ultimately be way over budget again. Maybe it’ll go out on bid in the next 3 months, and maybe the project will be done before 2020?

    Maybe I’ll get to retire before the project is actually finished so that I don’t have to move… ;-)

    It’s a huge waste of everyone’s time in attempting to “economize” like this (it would be cheaper and faster and better to simply build a new building, but that’s not in the cards), and it must be very frustrating for the project managers, designers, trades, etc., etc. We’re just the occupants – and we hate the process with a burning fire.

    Hang in there.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  88. 88.

    MattF

    A feature of my recent Verizon problems (described in the comments on the previous post) is that Verizon notified me last year that they are withdrawing support for the current POTS copper phone wiring and replacing it with fiber. It’s very unclear exactly what this means, except that if the copper wiring needs maintenance someday, it ain’t gonna come from Verizon. And it’s not going to be connected to your phone. And having a landline phone is no guarantee that your current POTS service will always have power– you need an independent backup. And if you have DSL internet service, it’s prudent to switch, go to cable or fiber internet service.

    In my own case, I was planning to go to fiber (FiOS) service anyhow and I live in an urban area with a reliable power supply. But as noted in the OP, many people do not.

  89. 89.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Another Scott:

    it would be cheaper and faster and better to simply build a new building, but that’s not in the cards

    Columbus, Ohio did a lot of that. Sucked the character right out of most of downtown.

  90. 90.

    marduk

    Since our power grid is shit (lots of wires above ground, lots of trees), about 100,000 of the 300,000 or so households here lost power.

    Minor quibble: The Rochester Metropolitan Area is about 400K households or 1M people. As I understand it the outage at peak affected about 140K people.

  91. 91.

    Louise B.

    The national convention of the ACDA – the American Choral Directors Association – is being held in Minnihaha this weekend. I know a few people who are attending – they are a nerdy group, but they would fit right in with the BJers.

  92. 92.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Another Scott:

    and it must be very frustrating for the project managers,

    Those things aren’t frustrating at all. They’re part of the “personal salary continuation program.”

  93. 93.

    Ruckus

    I’ve had an ongoing fight with Charter (and I’m sure the rest are not one iota better) over the cost of internet only they just jacked up 50%. At first they tried to tell me it was a competitive rate. I asked them who the fucking competition was because no one else is supplying 95% of Pasadena and specifically the address I live at. I’ve filed 2 complaints with the FCC, Charter backed down once, but basically told me to pound sand, pay up or go fuck myself. And the FCC really is no help at all, especially now that the shitgibbon is listed as being in charge. We could get DSL from ATT but I had that for 7 yrs because that was all I could get then and it was almost useless.
    As you may be able to tell I’m not a big fan of any of the internet suppliers, if I were on my own I’d use my T Mobile data and tell Charter to take a flying fucking leap. I’ve been told that ATT is setting up supplying this area, even though they are just as bad maybe I can swing a low cost starting service and when they jack up the rate, switch over to Charter, going back and forth when each one jacks up the rate. Or maybe Google will come in and fuck them both over. A boy can dream.

  94. 94.

    Pogonip

    We get those package offers in the mail at least every other day, multiple times a day by e-mail. I never bite for the reason Mr. Mix doesn’t–I’m not putting all my eggs in one rotten basket!

    I have a theory that our lords and masters all watched Deep Space Nine as kids and decided they wanted to grow up to be Farengi. And they did.

  95. 95.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Louise B.:

    The national convention of the ACDA – the American Choral Directors Association – is being held in Minnihaha this weekend. I know a few people who are attending – they are a nerdy group, but they would fit right in with the BJers.

    Merde! I’ll run back down to the bar and give him the website. Unless he’s already closed the deal….

  97. 97.

    catclub

    @Omnes Omnibus: Net neutrality dies when AT&T gives you no data charges on stuff through their selected set of websites on your cell phone.

    So it will die.

  98. 98.

    Another Scott

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, it needs to be done smartly.

    In our case, it’s almost entirely a funding-rules issue far above everyone’s pay grade and has almost nothing to do with architectural interest or the like. Everyone agrees that taking our group from one building and scattering us over 3+ buildings doesn’t make sense. But, “You can use this bucket of money to do this, but not to do that. That is forbidden. There’s no money available to do that.”

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  99. 99.

    Pogonip

    @danielx: Once Grandma gives up cable news she’ll never go back. I now find it so annoying –and I was once a loyal Countdown viewer–that when I’m in a waiting room full of mostly men I ask the Keeper of the Control to change it to ESPN; mostly women, a shopping channel; mixed, HGTV. Nobody’s ever glared at me but a number of people have looked relieved.

    My son must be the only man on earth who watches shopping. He’s never interested in buying anything; must have a crush on one or more of the pitchwomen.

  100. 100.

    Another Scott

    @Gin & Tonic: Yeah, I guess there is that… ;-)

    However, it’s kinda hard to justify having all those people working for so long if there’s nothing concrete to show for it at the end.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  101. 101.

    J R in WV

    We have a Generac natural gas powered air cooled system, 22KWatts. It runs everything but the A/C. I still have a Yamaha 2500 watt gen set that runs so quiet you can sleep next to it … not a good idea, but it was meant for camping, but with electric.

    I really recommend the Generac system, it’s actually cheaper to burn the natural gas than to use the grid power. Except for wear & tear. And the noise.

  102. 102.

    Lyrebird

    @Pogonip: When I’m in a waiting room I usually try to find the volume control and see how far I can turn it down without drawing attention to myself… Most other wait-ers are a decade or three older than me, and I’ve had a couple older fellows outright thank me (phew! thought I was in trouble) for sparing them.

    In the airport yesterday, though, I felt annoyed that my kid and I couldn’t escape Lyin’ Ryan and Random Freedom Caucus Dude…

  103. 103.

    BruceFromOhio

    @marduk: Minor quibble.

    MumFromOhio stopped just short of a tree falling across the road – she watched it come down and block the state route. She backed it up and drove around another way. Then, a lady in the road waving at her made her stop, and said don’t go this way, it’s trees and wires. So she backed it up and went the side-side route and finally made it home where the power is expected to be out for two days, maybe more. The back property is a mess of downed trees, and the police have said stay off the roads.

    This story is repeated more than a 140k times.

  104. 104.

    Yarrow

    @amk: Nigel Farage, you say?

    Nigel Farage’s top aide has been sentenced in the US for illegally using the dark web to launder money.

    George Cottrell was sentenced by US District Judge Diane Humetewato to eight months behind bars after pleading guilty to one count of wire fraud. He has also been fined for $30,000.

    The 23-year-old will not spend long behind bars as he has already been in custody in Phoenix, Arizona, for almost eight months.

    He will need to be processed by the Bureau of Prisons and then US Immigration and Customs Enforcement before he can be sent back to the UK.

    Criminal immigrant and not from Mexico. Go figure.

  106. 106.

    mai naem mobile

    @efgoldman: nah,I was just going to tell you to leave copper out of it because it actually serves lots of good purposes unlike Lumpy.

  108. 108.

    Suzanne

    @Gin & Tonic: Nah. I’m a project manager (architectural) and we don’t like making endless changes for no good reason any more than anyone else does. As the economy rebounded, construction materials went up a lot in price, and wages/salaries are rebounding, so projects that were affordable two years ago are no longer affordable. It sucks to cut everything nice out of a project.

  109. 109.

    Suzanne

    @Mike J: McMansion Hell is one of my favorite ways to let off steam. I laugh so hard at how much they hate can lights.

  110. 110.

    Lyrebird

    @BruceFromOhio: Glad Mum is okay! I once had a fortunate car problem that meant I commuted home an hour late… an hour *after* a “downburst” blew down several trees per block…Yikes.

  111. 111.

    Davebo

    Go practically anywhere in Europe. Major cities, small hamlets and everywhere in between.

    Then look up. What don’t you see?

    Of course moving from the old light poles would cost shit billions of dollars and their are downsides to buried lines but still. When will we make America great again???

  112. 112.

    joel hanes

    @Louise B.:

    See, this is why I love Balloon Juice

    And isn’t it fun to say Minnehaha ?
    Minnehaha Falls is a lovely park.

    My favorite Wisconsin exit sign is
    Oconomowoc / Peewaukee

  114. 114.

    Amaranthine RBG

    @efgoldman:
    Seriously?

    Plug it into your car’s USB Or plug it into a laptop usb. Or if this an actual problem where you live get an external battery that you keep charged.

    For fuck sake, what are the people going to do when there are real problems.

  115. 115.

    Don K

    Well, I’m with the dreaded ATT UVerse (DSL) for TV, Phone, and Internet here in the Detroit area and so far everything has held up. Once in a while we lose internet, phone is even more infrequent, and we almost never lose TV. By contrast, my sister-in-law in MA is with Comcast, and when we were visiting over Christmas her internet and phone were out pretty much the entire week we were there.

    We have a whole-house natural gas generator, so we’re indifferent to power outages. On Wednesday the power went out for a half hour or so, the generator started up after 15 seconds or so of no power, and we were good to go.

  117. 117.

    Smedley the uncertain

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: And just how long will the cell tower power stay up? Most PUCs mandate a certain ‘uptime’ during an outage for land lines. Not so much for cell providers. Personal experience: Power out, Cell charged off the truck battery in the driveway–no signal, princess phone in the house reporting power lines down across the street.

  118. 118.

    joel hanes

    @Amaranthine RBG:

    what are the people going to do when there are real problems

    Learn fast but unevenly; make more mistakes immediately.
    Suffer. Improvise. Muddle through.
    Sparkle for a time, endure what must be endured.

  122. 122.

    Davebo

    Here the big power killer is hurricanes and they just don’t happen enough to justify a generator, much less a whole house one.

    The last one left us dark for two weeks. A client offered to drop by a portable generator but I said “why? food is already spoiled and it won’t run my A/C.” Spent a week hanging out at a friends Tex-Mex restaurant sucking his wifi and margaritas till I finally decided a week of margaritas all day was too much!

  123. 123.

    efgoldman

    @joel hanes:

    Sparkle for a time, endure what must be endured.

    Sorry, too old for sparkling.
    All the sparkle is with granddaughter (she’s in a princess phase) 400 miles away.

  124. 124.

    Yarrow

    @Amaranthine RBG: Real emergencies? Like major natural disaster, fourteen days without power, cell service down to only intermittent text capability, nightly curfews and authorities telling everyone to stay off the roads except for emergencies? That kind of thing? POTS worked the whole time with a phone plugged straight into the wall that didn’t need power.

    Battery pack chargers wore down after a day. You weren’t supposed to be in your car anyway and couldn’t safely drive anywhere, so how were you supposed to charge anything in the car? Use your precious gasoline idling your car in the driveway? Gas stations were sold out so that wasn’t a smart idea. After a couple of days most people could get back to work and so forth. But not everyone works away from home. For those that didn’t have power for fourteen days and couldn’t go in to work to charge things up it was a long slog.

  128. 128.

    Davebo

    @Yarrow: Seriously, most cars allow you to turn on the ignition but not start the car and still charge devices or even charge them without the ignition on.

    But I hear what you’re saying.

  129. 129.

    Yarrow

    @Omnes Omnibus: It looks close to the water. That would be nice. Is it a property you’re familiar with? Doesn’t seem like enough pictures. Did I miss pictures of the living room type area? No pictures of the balcony and how that outdoor space could be used?

  130. 130.

    Davebo

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Classic tactic. Find an idiot realtor that will take a 30 day listing contract. Then fish. Eventually unless you’re in a big metro area the realtors will catch on but who knows, maybe someone with more money than sense will bite!

  131. 131.

    Yarrow

    @Davebo: Depending on how much you’re charging and how good your battery is, that might not be smart in an emergency. Also, how safe is the location? Do you want to leave your phone charging and your keys in the car if you’re not there? Or just sit there for however long it takes to charge your devices?

  132. 132.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Yarrow: I am not a realtor. I really was aiming at Suzanne.

    It is five blocks from the lake and more from the river. It is a block away from the Cathedral.

  135. 135.

    Yarrow

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’m not familiar with Milwaukee, but could just see the water in the map. Is that a good location? Seems really pricey for what you get, though. The fact that there aren’t pictures of all the rooms makes me suspicious. What are they hiding? Do they really want to sell?

  136. 136.

    efgoldman

    @Mike J:

    1.2 for 4200 feet doesn’t seem outrageous.

    Omnes could probably talk them down to a mil. He’s very persuasive.

  137. 137.

    Steve in the ATL

    Speaking of ripoffs, that “Chocolate Mousse Cake for Two” was barely adequate for one.

  139. 139.

    Tripod

    Copper line is going the way of the Dodo, and that’s separate from the regulatory environment, just a declining customer base crossing under fixed costs. You run into loads of dead copper voice infrastructure out there in commercial spaces.

  141. 141.

    J R in WV

    You guys are so sold on cell phones, you must live where things lay out flat. At our house cell connectionservice won’t ever happen. We live in a wooded cover, surrounded by mossy rocks and ferns.

    But cell is line of sight, and from our house all you can see is our wooded acres.

    Maybe if Google gets balloon cells up at 50,000 feet, but towers won’t ever do it, not in the mountains!

  142. 142.

    Ruckus

    @Gin & Tonic:
    I’m almost as old a EF and I’ve had a landline for one yr out of the last 12 because it came with the DSL, all I could get where I was living because there was no cell signal or real internet access for anyone. In an expensive area of LA. I’ve also not had cable or TV for the last 12 yrs. Don’t miss it. I did, about 5 yrs ago, stay at a friends house, and watched cable for one night. 400 channels and nothing worth watching.

  143. 143.

    SiubhanDuinne

    O/T, heads-up, anyone know what’s happened to John Cole now? He just put this on FB:

    when the going gets tough, you don’t want a criminal lawyer, you want a CRIMINAL lawyer

    and I don’t know whether it’s a genuine cry for help, or just JGC being JGC, or what. Do we need to send in the troops? Is he now PNG throughout the Nutmeg State?

  144. 144.

    Chet Murthy

    @Yarrow: Oh sorry, as you can tell, my indecision and lack of a defined position bleeds over into the English itself, wihch is …. a mess.

    “he” refers to Snowden. In my mind (yeah, and noplace else) “he” referred to Snowden since the comment I was replying to was referring to the refugees who sheltered him in HK.

    Sorry

  145. 145.

    NotMax

    Other than the bite in the wallet each month (the bulk of that being for cable TV rather than internet cost) and their moving the office one has to travel to to the far removed outskirts of town, have nothing much negative to say about my ISP. Oh, add that they do not have any sort of seniors discount plan to the frown list.

    Everyone points out how bad connection speed in the U.S. is as a given, but it really isn’t all that far out of the top 10 speeds in the world, ranks fastest in this hemisphere and higher speed than most European countries as well.

  146. 146.

    Davebo

    @J R in WV: Can you hear me now?

    Of course mountains make cellular easier, assuming there are enough hicks living in the hollers to make it profitable!

  147. 147.

    Another Scott

    @Omnes Omnibus: The design seems quite polarizing. If the right buyer comes along, it’ll probably sell for a good price. But there may only be one person in the city interested.

    Reminds me of a recent Love it or List it – they had a very modern design house (similar to that condo), built in the ’80s, that they wanted updated. And the lot had a huge pond. Any different house would also have to have a modern design and a pond. In North Carolina.

    Needless to say, they stayed. ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  148. 148.

    efgoldman

    @J R in WV:

    But cell is line of sight

    You could always go for a sat phone; it’s good enough for the bad guys in the ME….
    Or you could get a bigger tin can and a longer string.

  149. 149.

    Yarrow

    @J R in WV: Yep. That’s a definite issue for places like WV. Those hills and hollers have kept you guys well cut off in a lot of ways.

    Another problem with mobile phones is dead zones inside buildings. A couple of locations I visit regularly have no cell service in certain areas of the buildings. It’s a pain when you’re there because you’re completely cut off.

  151. 151.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @amk:

    A Canadian judge who asked a sexual assault complainant why she could not “keep your knees together” is resigning.
    Alberta Federal Court Justice Robin Camp’s decision came after a scathing Canadian Judicial Council review called for his removal.

    Brave, brave Sir Robin.

  153. 153.

    randy khan

    I’m in the telecom business, so I have some biases. Keep that in mind when you read what follows.

    1. Whatever you think of the cable companies (and some are pretty bad), an important part of the broadband story in the U.S. is that cable companies essentially are responsible for most (arguably nearly all) of the deployment of high-speed services to the mass market. Before cable modem service was brought to market, “high speed” service was 256 kbps, or 512 if you were really lucky. The first widely-deployed cable modem service was 3 Mbps, or about 12 times faster than standard DSL of the day. The availability of cable modem service was what caused DSL speeds to be increased and pushed phone companies to start deploying fiber (outside of small rural phone companies, which have different reasons, mostly in the form of really cheap financing available only to them.) Even now, the phone companies tend to lag far behind in a lot of the country because they refuse to spend money to upgrade their networks and are shifting capital to wireless. For instance, in upstate New York where my wife and I have a place (her grandparents’ house, which she couldn’t bear to let leave the family), the standard cable modem service is 100 Mbps; the phone company offers DSL that tops out at 7 Mbps if you happen to live in exactly the right place; most people are getting 1.5 – 3 Mbps for about the same price as the cable modem service. Cable modem service is about to move to 1 Gbps as the industry standard, which ain’t bad by any standard. (Weirdly, you’re most likely to get real high speed service from the phone company if you live in a suburb or a really rural area.)

    2. Not entirely relevant to this, but one of the most exciting parts of my career was when cable companies first developed cable modem service. Those of us involved in it (and I was not part of the technical side, to be clear) realized what a big deal it was and how it would change things. Once you saw the first demo, comparing cable modem speeds to dial-up and DSL, you knew.

    3. Here’s one example of I don’t post under my own name: I can’t say this in my professional life, but I completely agree that it’s a travesty that there isn’t mandatory backup power for all phone services, particularly because the phone companies are now moving towards the same kinds of technologies the cable companies use. (For instance, if you have FiOS, you’re in the same boat as cable phone customers.) The FCC adopted rules that require companies to make backup power solutions available to everyone, but it’s not the default, and providers can make you pay for the batteries. Personally, I’d have made providers give you at least 8 hours worth of backup, and probably more. One of the reasons I insisted that my phone provider keep my standard phone line when my wife and I renovated our house ten years ago was that I didn’t want to rely on battery backup if there was a power outage. My provider’s now in the process of converting everyone to a voice over IP solution, so I won’t be able to keep the separately-powered line for much longer, but when they switch us over I will be getting the battery backup solution, buying extra batteries, and making sure they’re charged. I’ll be doing the same for my in laws.

  155. 155.

    Davebo

    @Yarrow:

    We’re spoiled. “Completely Cutoff!!”

    I think about it a lot lately. I wouldn’t dream of heading out in the boat without my cell phone and of course the depth finder with GPS (even though I’m in a freaking creek off a lake and it’s literally impossible to get lost).

    When I think about the old days when I’d break down on the lake at night, 3 or 4 miles from the house and wonder how long will the trolling motor last. Today the neighbors I’d call for help probably wish I didn’t have a cell phone.

  157. 157.

    randy khan

    @NotMax:

    As you might guess from my long comment, the average would be higher if the freaking phone companies would just invest in their networks and offer speeds comparable to the cable operators. I haven’t had speed as low as the current U.S. average from my cable operator for about 5 years, maybe longer.

  159. 159.

    Davebo

    @randy khan: Thanks for that Randy. And you’re right.

    Imagine gigabit internet service which is now available here. First, I think “who the hell needs gigabit internet service” but when you add up all the TV’s, devices and computers in a home today of say 5 people and calculate the apps, video streaming and everything else it’s pretty crazy.

    I remember being so hyped when I could get a 10 megabit connection between two computers wired in the same building.

  160. 160.

    frosty

    @Another Scott: Many years ago, in a meeting with utilities, I was told that underground utility failures take much longer to repair. They’re not easy to find, and they take backhoes. Plus they’re much more expensive to install. I’m not sure, personally, if I’d prefer UG over AG. I would definitely prefer that they prune the fucking tree branches my AG wires go through.

    And to give Met Ed credit, they were doing a lot of that last summer.

  161. 161.

    Yarrow

    @Davebo: Yep. It’s weird how things change. You do adapt, though. One of these places I was talking about was the waiting room of a doctor’s office. I didn’t bring anything to read because I was just going to catch up on news and other things on my phone. Except there was no service. I finally asked the receptionist and she said it was a problem–just the way the building was designed. Pre cellphone I would have brought reading material like magazines or books. These days I expect I’ll be able to look at my phone.

  164. 164.

    NotMax

    @randy khan

    Yup.

    Friend here lives in the middle of the rain forest and all he has access to is DSL. He opted for the bottom tier plan (up to 7) and normally gets between 2 and 3.5. My cable averages about 60, but higher tiers are available.

    Asked him once how much he was dunned per month for the internet connection and, outraged as if it was ludicrously high, he said nine bucks a month.

    Haven’t stopped laughing since. You get what you pay for, indeed.

    Another friend who lives only a few blocks away from me has a T3 connection (IIRC) he happily pays the extra fees for as his vocation as well as avocations are all computer-related.

  165. 165.

    randy khan

    @frosty:

    This is something else I know from being in the telecom industry: Repairs for undergrounded lines are more difficult, but there is much, much less need for repairs than with overhead lines. And depending on how the lines are placed underground, you may not need a backhoe. In communities that are designed for underground lines from the start, they’re often in conduits, so you literally can pull new wires through rather than digging things up.

  166. 166.

    Davebo

    @frosty: That’s somewhat true about troubleshooting but the beauty is there isn’t nearly as much need to do so. 9 out of 10 new subdivisions are powered underground these days.

    In the long long long run underground is cheaper because even without storms and such the pruning requirements along get expensive. Then there’s the aesthetic value which I suppose is subjective.

  169. 169.

    NotMax

    @randy khan

    Underground electric also has to deal with heat dispersal. Far from insurmountable but not necessarily cost effective in less populous areas.

    Ditto for rights of way.

  170. 170.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @randy khan: Yup, true. The main problem is that it costs money that could otherwise be spent on hookers and blow for the executive suite, so skimp on it as much as you can. The issue of service density rules all. The more revenue that comes in on a fiber link, the better. Odds are good that you won’t need to repair it, but when you do, yowza. So, the concept of fiduciary responsibility being what it is, money is not set aside for dealing with emergencies, because, well, if we set it aside we can’t spend it on hookers and blow!

  171. 171.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @NotMax:

    Ditto for rights of way.

    Always a catch that few bother to take into account. See Trump, Donald, and his beautiful wall.

  172. 172.

    Ian

    about 100,000 of the 300,000

    You counting fairfax, monroe, or pittsford in their buddy? Or do they not count as roshester?

  173. 173.

    Davebo

    @NotMax: You need right of way regardless of whether it’s above or below ground.

    But you’re correct, heat dispersal is an issue but not an insurmountable one, just a more expensive one.

  174. 174.

    PST

    @efgoldman:

    You must have missed the other nite when I admitted I have “300 synonyms for orange” bookmarked.

    I’m still looking for the the much more obscure “300 rhymes for orange.”

  176. 176.

    Anne Laurie

    @Another Scott:

    Reminds me of a recent Love it or List it – they had a very modern design house (similar to that condo), built in the ’80s, that they wanted updated. And the lot had a huge pond. Any different house would also have to have a modern design and a pond. In North Carolina.

    Needless to say, they stayed. ;-)

    Since we don’t have cable, Spousal Unit & I only see ‘Love It or List It’ if we hit the gym at the right time. So our viewing may be skewed, but we’ve taken to calling it ‘Can This Marriage Be Saved?‘ I understand the producers can do quite a lot with editing choices, not to mention that house-hunting puts a strain on any relationship, but some of those people… seems like one in five couples involve a closeted guy and a (determinedly or dumbly) oblivious woman, or a borderline abuser (of either sex) who’s on the tipping point for police-intervention territory. Not to mention all those dyads where you think, Well, it’s nice they’ve got each other and aren’t making two more people unhappy.

  177. 177.

    Anne Laurie

    @frosty:

    I would definitely prefer that they prune the fucking tree branches my AG wires go through.

    There’s this one godsdamned oak tree at the edge of the neighboring property that leans over my asphalt-driveway ‘tomato garden’… and also the power wires running down the block, which is commercial / light industrial starting with the storage company next door. An errant branch takes down those lines every 18 months or so, but the blasted utility company refuses to do more than the barest temporary limb cut-backs. We’d rather not spend the quoted $1,000 to have the whole tree removed at our expense, and the storage company can’t be arsed because (a) it usually happens outside their mingy business hours and (b) given the commercial services further down the block, we’re pretty high priority for power restoration — there was a crew outside during Hurricane Sandy, replacing the blown cable boxes in the pouring rain & darkness. I suspect the power company could’ve removed the whole tree years ago for less than the cost of employee overtime, but then again, we’ve had three different names on our power bills over the last twenty years, which probably has something to do with it.

  178. 178.

    Chris T.

    @Mike J: 4200 sqft and a decent exterior and interior, somewhere nice downtown, would fetch way over $2M in San Francisco or the peninsula, and close to or over $2M in the east bay, even in the middle of gangland Richmond or some such. But Milwaukee, though?!

    (For comparison, a buildable lot in Palo Alto costs over $2M.)

  180. 180.

    Chris T.

    @frosty:

    Many years ago, in a meeting with utilities, I was told that underground utility failures take much longer to repair. They’re not easy to find, and they take backhoes. Plus they’re much more expensive to install. I’m not sure, personally, if I’d prefer UG over AG. I would definitely prefer that they prune the fucking tree branches my AG wires go through.

    Partly true. The “more expensive to install” part is definitely true. The “longer to repair” part depends on the installation; the “not easy to find” part depends on yet more items (TDRs pinpoint total failures instantly so there’s that) and the “take backhoes” is another one of those “depends” things (is there already suitable conduit or similar?), although it’s true more often than not.

    All that said, when I picked a location to move to here, I was glad that this particular neighborhood has all the utilities undergrounded. The big win you get is that while both installation and failures are more expensive, they’re far less frequent. In the end, the price is kind of a wash, and meanwhile my lovely SFBay view has no wires, unlike my previous SFBay view. (Though the wires were not the worst part, the worst was the, er, lovely cough Chevron refinery looming in the middle distance…)

  183. 183.

    Taylor

    My house built in 1927 had underground power lines (conduit visible in basement), but at some point they went cheap and went to overhead lines. I’m told they still do underground power lines…..in the right kind of neighborhoods. Membership has its privileges.

    I took copper phone lines off my house during siding work last year. We have both coax for cable and fiber-optic. One obsolete technology is enough. The issue with VOIP is power. The solution is to go solar, not keep an ancient over-priced technology.

  184. 184.

    Raven Onthill

    “I get that there are a lot more important things in life, but I’ll bet that we’d get a bunch of votes from otherwise uninterested voters if we become enemies of these greedy bastards.”

    But lose a lot of campaign contributions.

    Follow the money.

  185. 185.

    Raven Onthill

    @randy khan: When we had a major storm in the Seattle area, T-Mobile’s cell service failed. The phones were fine, but the towers had no backup power.

    While we’re bitching about telecomm, cell service is much, much less expensive to provide than wireline – there is no vast network of wires to maintain. Really, this ought to be a tax-funded public service like roads. It would probably cost, oh, at most $5/mo/person. I may be overestimating.

  186. 186.

    randy khan

    @Raven Onthill:

    Modern mobile networks are pretty expensive, in large part because cell sizes are getting pretty small. I happened to be involved in the purchase of a cellular system in a major city in the early 1990s, and it covered the entire metro area with fewer than 90 cell sites. Today, that system has thousands of sites, and the number is growing rapidly. Each one of those sites has to have some connection back to the switch, usually a high-capacity wired connection. Two of the most significant expenses for wireless companies are building/upgrading cell sites and paying for the connections to the switches.

    Where you’d save money in a public service scenario is on the spectrum, which is a major expense these days because the government auctions it off – the wireless industry is about to pay $20 billion or so for access to some broadcast channels that won’t be available for a few years. But that still wouldn’t get you close to $5/mo/person.

    On the backup power point, this is something the FCC tried to make happen, but it didn’t do the job right and the original order – now many years ago – got shut down by the courts. It had been considering a new approach to making wireless providers have backup power, but it was behind other things on the agenda, and I’m guessing it’s now dead for a while, certainly for at least another year and maybe until we have a Democratic President. (The new chairman of the FCC generally is a deregulation kind of guy, but he also actually knows the field, so there’s some chance that something like that might surface while he’s in charge. Every Republican FCC chairman has turned out to want to do something unexpected – Bush II’s second FCC chairman, who generally was a waste of oxygen, was the one who pushed rules to require 911 for voice over IP telephone service.)

  188. 188.

    shoeflying

    Guess what, at least in rural areas they aren’t actually maintaining the old land lines, either. I had one at a remote cabin, (used to not get cell service there), and the last time I tried to use it, no dial tone. They apparently don’t make enough on the hold outs to proactively maintain the lines.

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