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smaihlee's profile

New Member

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9 Messages

Monday, December 5th, 2022 4:35 PM

4th occurrence of fiber cut by city waste truck

For the 4th time in 3 years, my fiber service line has been severed by city waste collection equipment.  At least once this has occurred with a regular bin collection truck, and at least once by supplemental equipment (eg crane/scoop picking up leaves)

The problem is 2-fold:  the city crews are supposed to use spotters when using supplemental equipment to avoid this very issue, but when short-staffed they admittedly don’t always do this.  
However, the placement of the line by AT&T leaves little margin for error even with careful crew depending on where the neighbors put their bins/yard waste.  

I’m honestly at a loss here for what can be done to Lee this from happening, although I feel that knowing this ongoing issue, AT&T should move the service connection point to reduce the occurrence.  Unfortunately I’m at the mercy of the technicians performing the repairs who likely don’t have a lot of leeway and are instructed to use the closest connection point possible.  

Is there any way for me to have a call with someone at AT&T to discuss this and figure out a path forward…hopefully ahead of my scheduled service tomorrow?

ACE - Guru

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9.9K Messages

1 year ago

Maybe you could post a picture of the cable with a perspective that we can see how low it hangs.  It would seem to me that since both ends are fixed heights, moving farther away from the closest connection point would result in a longer run and the cable would actually be lower at some point.

New Member

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9 Messages

1 year ago

Hopefully these make sense as it’s really hard to get the lines into a photo :)

Photos show connection point at the main line in the street, with a line going to the connection point at the house.  My house is near the top of the street and therefore the lines are closest to the road.  The connection at the street is directly above the area in front of the driveways of my 2 neighbors across the street.  This point is ar the spot where they put their trash cans and yard waste.  The street slopes down but the main power line doesn’t slope down too much.

The last time this happened they raised the connector line a little and ran through my trees but that was just a desperate stopgap IMO.  That being said,  I don’t know if there is an easy solution, but obviously didn’t prevent the problem.

Former Employee

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22.2K Messages

1 year ago

Midspan connection which will be lower than pole height connection….

Then running to a point on house even lower resulting in slanted looping drop to home.

One option is having a pole placed in your front yard that the drop could connect to before continuing to home.

The other is paying to have fiber buried from fiber terminal, down the pole, boring under the street and then burial to side of home. 

The question becomes whose paying for an alternative, ATT expectation is aerial service should be delivered aerial.

How does your power, and cable come to the home? From the back side?

ACE - Guru

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9.9K Messages

1 year ago

Yeah, sorta what I envisioned.  Like I said, both ends are are pretty much at fixed heights so you can't really do anything about that.  Moving the end across the street to a different point, one farther away from that closest point now, will only make things worse.

@spoom2   Have you got any ideas on how to raise this up as it traverses across the street?

Sorry, @my thoughts didn't see your post when I was typing mine.  I like the pole idea!

(edited)

Former Employee

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22.2K Messages

1 year ago

Pole, 25 ft length, about 375 pounds

buried 6 feet deep leaves 19 feet above ground.

I expect the strand the fiber is connecting to is around 15 to 18 feet above ground.

Cost for pole, boring hole to set pole in, backfill, etc then add cost to install new fiber run as existing would likely be too short. 

Community Support

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230.7K Messages

1 year ago

Hi there, @smaihlee. Thanks for coming back with the pictures that were requested. We do appreciate it. We will need to look at this further.

 

In order for us to move forward, we will need to move this conversation into our AT&T Direct Message space. You will see a chat icon, next to a bell icon, in the upper right corner of this thread. Our next message to you will appear there.

 

Looking forward to finding the correct route to take to stop the fiber from being cut.

 

Matthew, AT&T Community Specialist

Expert

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19.2K Messages

1 year ago

Minimum height above a street 18 feet doesn't look like you have that from photo. The pole solution posted by @my thoughts would probably be the best solution.

ACE - Guru

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9.9K Messages

1 year ago

Rather than the long heavy pole driven into the ground, what about something smaller in the roof, maybe attached to the chimney?  Or are there codes or other issues making that a bad idea?

Expert

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19.2K Messages

1 year ago

Problem I see with putting the house attachment on a brick chimney is if the line got snagged it could pull out the bricks it's attached to if not worse. I've seen this happen. I think the pole is the least expensive safest solution. Also, if there isn't the 18 feet of clearance from the road they shouldn't charge for it. Going by the parked car I'd say it's 15 feet at the most, probably less. 

ACE - Guru

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9.9K Messages

1 year ago

Yeah, good point about the bricks. 

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