Faith just called. She hadn’t seen my email, but her boss had either seen it and/or seen my blog posting, and she’s been tasked with sorting things.
The contractor is coming on Tuesday some time between 8am and 8pm. As it happens I have several meetings on Tuesday but no classes, so I ask if maybe the contractor could call me before starting work and I’ll rush home. Faith says she is going to try to make this happen.
If so, I say, it would be the first pre-visit phone call I’d gotten from Comcast in this process. Faith explains that they call before in-house visits, but not for visits that involve only outdoor work, since you don’t need to be there. (Except, I think to myself, when you are needed to open the invisible immaterial fence, but I don’t say that; Faith is too nice to snark to.)
What do people without blogs do?
Previously:
You are far better off buying and installing all of your cables yourself, and only have the cable or phone tech do the final connection from pole to your outside box or even to inside of house.
Chances are they won’t use the correct cable, and connectors. Comcast will use their standard cable rated for “aerial” outdoor use, not for “direct” burial. Ditto for AT&T.
When I remodeled 8 years ago, I put in plastic electrical conduit and strung high-quality cables I bought online, of all types, everywhere around outside of my house. The yard was all dug up anyway.
Coaxial for satellite/cable, Cat 5/6 for phone and network, and low voltage for outside lighting. I also put in pull strings to add additional cables. All of it is rated for direct burial, AND had the proper frequency for HD uses.
So when I needed to install a wireless router on other side of house the other month, the writing was all ready to hook up.
Alas, I didn’t bother with fiber optic, because Comcast and AT&T have pretty much decided to we only deserve 3rd World internet. Google Fiber, one day, might make it here.
FPL also offers fiber, but it’s absurdly pricey to get them to run a line to anywhere outside a downtown biz district, office park or college campus.
Good luck!