Hi everyone here, first time poster (sorry upfront if this post violates any rules I'm not aware about - this was not intentional).
So here I am moving to a new area (Scranton area in PA) where Comcast seems to be the best option and ordering Comcast installation the last weekend (I live alone now and pretty much work all weekdays). The guy comes in on Sunday, briefly looks at the pole that I have my electric meter on and says that he would make a whole new line from the pole across the street, DRILL THE HOLE in the wall and place a new line there.
I rent and it is a brand new house, so I get to our property manager and she tells me not to do any damage to outside walls and look for a cable box beneath the house.
Okay, I take tools and start removing panels around the house. Tech just stands still and silent ("I can't do any damage to the house" - yep, sure, you're ready to drill a hole in the wall, but can't help with vinyl panels, I got it...). Finally I find two coax cables roughly under the place in the house where I have outlets, so I ask the tech to check these cables. He places some kind of a coax colored cap on the outlet inside the house, goes underneath and a couple of minutes later tells me that both wires are dead and he has no idea what they are hooked to. I ask him to check an outlet in the other room - two minutes later the same result.
Okay, I ask him to extend the proper line to the pole, then place a temporary line to the house (to check if everything works) and leave the rest for my property techs to handle (check if my house outlets are fine etc.) - "No, it is against Comcast standards, I can't do this". Put a line just to the nearest pole and let techs or me handle the rest? No, can't do this either. So he reschedules me for the next week and tells that he either drills the hole or pretty much does nothing.
And here comes an interesting part (and the reason why I wrote here) - when the tech left, I got a long coax cable that I got from Cablevision install in NJ from many years back, hooked it to the wall outlet, took multimeter, another end of this cable and went underneath the house. And, yes, multimeter shows continuity, so the cable seems to work perfectly fine. Same with another outlet. In the end I just hook my TV up to the wall outlet and use this long cable to try to hook a small antenna - as soon as I do it, I get ~15 local channels - so the cable definitely works...
So, I basically have two questions:
1) What was that at all? I mean, is there any particular incentive for installation tech to "ignore" the existing wiring and insist on drilling a hole? Again, it's a brand new house and I just see no point in drilling its walls as long as there is an existing wiring inside...
2) The tech never said that the existing cable in the wall is "bad", he simply said it was "dead" and apparently that is not the case. The cable itself is "HONEYWELL P/N 5003 RG 6/U 18AWG 3GHZ BROADBAND PREMIUM (ETL) XXXXXX TYPE CATV OR" - I am clearly no pro in cable stuff, but it does not seem to be the worst cable in the world, especially given how short that piece is. Do you think this cable is fine for the installation?
3) What should I do now? The tech suggested to contact the "property manager" to get permission for drilling a wall, but again, see #1 :-)
Many thanks in advance!
Mikka
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