Mysterious spray paint markings on road

[MossRoad]

Here in my part of East Texas, they started running Fiber Optic down the roads. This included drilling under the road to run the line from one side to the other. Since there isn't anything else in the area, there is a chance that this might be it. In my case, we were able to connect to the fiber optic for unbelievably fast internet that costs us $75 a month.

AT&T just ran fiber through our entire neighborhood and told us we'd have to convert from copper to fiber by the end of August, as all copper services were going away. We ditched our land line to a cell line years ago, but still had internet over copper. We never had a problem with it. Wife works from home. Streaming TVs. Adult children visit. Never had speed issues and it was only 100mb service.

They said they were going to upgrade us to fiber for free to 2G service for the same price at something like $89 per month. That's 20X faster. We weren't having any problems at the current speed, so I asked for a 1G plan. $62 a month. So we got 10X faster for about $25 less.

The installer never showed up on appointed day. And if he had, no utilities had been marked. I stopped the two AT&T college kids on scooters that have been roaming the neighborhood signing everyone up and told them the guy was a no show. So they poked some buttons and rescheduled. Guy showed up and laid fiber down one the lawn and across the driveway. Said we could drive over it. A week later some utility markers appeared and Saturday we left for some groceries, came home, and the cable was buried....

Monday, the gas company came out and marked the gas line.
The installer had crossed it twice. Luckily, nothing got cut.

Internet service has gone out several times since and wife has had to travel in to work.

All-in-all, not a great exp experience.

 

[Dftodd]

AT&T just ran fiber through our entire neighborhood and told us we'd have to convert from copper to fiber by the end of August, as all copper services were going away. We ditched our land line to a cell line years ago, but still had internet over copper. We never had a problem with it. Wife works from home. Streaming TVs. Adult children visit. Never had speed issues and it was only 100mb service.

They said they were going to upgrade us to fiber for free to 2G service for the same price at something like $89 per month. That's 20X faster. We weren't having any problems at the current speed, so I asked for a 1G plan. $62 a month. So we got 10X faster for about $25 less.

The installer never showed up on appointed day. And if he had, no utilities had been marked. I stopped the two AT&T college kids on scooters that have been roaming the neighborhood signing everyone up and told them the guy was a no show. So they poked some buttons and rescheduled. Guy showed up and laid fiber down one the lawn and across the driveway. Said we could drive over it. A week later some utility markers appeared and Saturday we left for some groceries, came home, and the cable was buried....

Monday, the gas company came out and marked the gas line.
The installer had crossed it twice. Luckily, nothing got cut.

Internet service has gone out several times since and wife has had to travel in to work.

All-in-all, not a great exp experience.

We ran into the growing pains of fiber going out on occasion in the rental neighborhood we were living in for a couple years.

They were still building homes in the neighborhood when we moved in. Most of the outages were someone either clipping the line while they were building one of the houses.

Or them shutting the system down for a bit to add in the newer homes.

I've lost fiber at our rural address a couple of times in the past two years.

Once was a system malfunction. The outage lasted a couple hours.

The other time (outage for a couple days) was a driver malfunction

Someone missed the corner for our road and plowed through network hub that handled the area.

I bet their insurance company was pizzed

 

[WM75Guy]

AT&T just ran fiber through our entire neighborhood and told us we'd have to convert from copper to fiber by the end of August, as all copper services were going away. We ditched our land line to a cell line years ago, but still had internet over copper. We never had a problem with it. Wife works from home. Streaming TVs. Adult children visit. Never had speed issues and it was only 100mb service.

They said they were going to upgrade us to fiber for free to 2G service for the same price at something like $89 per month. That's 20X faster. We weren't having any problems at the current speed, so I asked for a 1G plan. $62 a month. So we got 10X faster for about $25 less.

The installer never showed up on appointed day. And if he had, no utilities had been marked. I stopped the two AT&T college kids on scooters that have been roaming the neighborhood signing everyone up and told them the guy was a no show. So they poked some buttons and rescheduled. Guy showed up and laid fiber down one the lawn and across the driveway. Said we could drive over it. A week later some utility markers appeared and Saturday we left for some groceries, came home, and the cable was buried....

Monday, the gas company came out and marked the gas line.
The installer had crossed it twice. Luckily, nothing got cut.

Internet service has gone out several times since and wife has had to travel in to work.

All-in-all, not a great exp experience.

We also got fiber. I ask for utility locates before burying the 2 service cables to the house and shop. They said it wasn't necessary as they only bury the cable 6" underground. Wonder how long before I hit one.

 

[WinterDeere]

Monday, the gas company came out and marked the gas line.
The installer had crossed it twice. Luckily, nothing got cut.

Fiber is only put about 10 inches down, IIRC. I suspect gas has to be set way deeper than that.

 

[rontaki]

Fiber is only put about 10 inches down, IIRC. I suspect gas has to be set way deeper than that.

Often, fiber causes gas.

 

[Oaktree]

AT&T just ran fiber through our entire neighborhood and told us we'd have to convert from copper to fiber by the end of August, as all copper services were going away. We ditched our land line to a cell line years ago, but still had internet over copper. We never had a problem with it. Wife works from home. Streaming TVs. Adult children visit. Never had speed issues and it was only 100mb service.
....
Internet service has gone out several times since and wife has had to travel in to work.

All-in-all, not a great exp experience.

You were lucky, I don't miss copper at all. Then again, you may be in an area where the infrastucture was newer, lots of the lines here date back to the 70s or before. When cable finally came here about 12 years ago the trunk lines were all fiber.
All in all, I've had very few issues with fiber internet, either at home or at worksites.

Are all the utilities (electric, phone, etc.) buried where you are? When they installed it here, the fiber runs overhead from a demarc point a couple poles down the road to the house. Nothing buried. I'd want it in a conduit if it was underground.

 

[paulsharvey]

I’d say they want a utility locate in all 4 directions 50 feet. I’m not sure what toc means? When I was doing construction staking it meant top of curb.

T.O.C, could refer to top of a vertical curve (hill), but yes, white is for requesting locates. Survey would be pink.

Edit: I see yall already solved that one.

In the future, in most of the US;
color codes are;
White- white lining for locate request
Pink-survey
Orange-telecom
Red-power
Green-sanitary (gravity or force main) or effluent
Yellow-gas (also other fuels)
Blue-water
Purple-reclaimed or sometimes raw water

On industrial or military sites; they might have other codes for compressed air, steam, oily waste, salt water, ect

 

[ponytug]

You were lucky, I don't miss copper at all. Then again, you may be in an area where the infrastucture was newer, lots of the lines here date back to the 70s or before. When cable finally came here about 12 years ago the trunk lines were all fiber.
All in all, I've had very few issues with fiber internet, either at home or at worksites.

Are all the utilities (electric, phone, etc.) buried where you are? When they installed it here, the fiber runs overhead from a demarc point a couple poles down the road to the house. Nothing buried. I'd want it in a conduit if it was underground.

You are lucky to have '70s era lines. Ours date from WWII...

Not that we have fiber, but we were so glad to be done with the lousy infrastructure. Linesmen told us multiple times that the old wire splice/transfer boxes would get filled with acorns and short out in fog and rain.

I rather think that we will have to move to get fiber.

All the best, Peter

 

[Torvy]

They wasted a bunch of money running Spectrum down our road. Made a mess and zero people wanted it. Everyone uses Starlink because it goes out less than the buried lines.

 

[paulsharvey]

You were lucky, I don't miss copper at all. Then again, you may be in an area where the infrastucture was newer, lots of the lines here date back to the 70s or before. When cable finally came here about 12 years ago the trunk lines were all fiber.
All in all, I've had very few issues with fiber internet, either at home or at worksites.

Are all the utilities (electric, phone, etc.) buried where you are? When they installed it here, the fiber runs overhead from a demarc point a couple poles down the road to the house. Nothing buried. I'd want it in a conduit if it was underground.

Buried is more expensive in the Short term, but telecoms pay a joint use rental fee on the power company's poles; in the neighborhood of $7/month/pole. Doesn't seem bad, until you look at rural areas where there might be 5+ poles per customer. And the cost for the joint user is greater than the utility bill, before covering installation, cost of service, repairs, life span replacement, ect

Rural customers are generally a not profit making group for all utilities, gas, power, telecoms, ect

Of coarse this may vary company to company, and region to region. I have "heard" in the past, in Penn. every 3rd pole was technically owned by the phone provider. Dont know if that was Ever true, and surely isn't now as there are often 3-5 telecoms in a right of way, even if several aren't available for residential hookup.