Comcast; loss of dial tone

Yes, we have the same problem up here with the Rogers cable phone service. = The modem is located on the second floor because many times it's easier to = bring it in there from a telephone pole drop, but the alarm is in the basem= ent. I've tried many things, including all the back feed options, but the o= nly thing that has worked is to play hardball with the client! I tell the c= lient to have the cable guys back to bring services in properly into the ba= sement, or the alarm will never be able to be made to work properly. Works =

Not a solution, but an example of a device that could work; I would not want to gerry-rig this animal, but a manufacturer might want to consider designing one:

Take an ordinary cordless telephone, add a jack ? positioned high enough on the phone to allow the phone to sit in its charging cradle. Connect the ACP to the cordless phone jack. When the ACP is ready to ship alarm signals, it gets dial tone through the cordless phone jack. No line seizure of course, but it does offer exclusive use of the line, once dial tone is heard.

Another use of this configuration is a cordless phone connection to a fax machine that is positioned far from the cable box or from a wall jack.

Another use would be in a home office where an ordinary desk phone might be the phone of choice, rather than the cordless phone - or several desk phones within an office already connected in parallel and positioned for convenient use, could be connected in parallel to the cordless phone. This would be an advantage for me because I would not need to exit my chair to retrieve the cordless phone which is "never" close at hand.

Hmmmm... Wonder what other uses there are? Where is my patent attorney when I need him?

Charlie

Or the output from the cordless phone coud be fed to the nearest house jack, back-feeding dial tone to any run-of-the-mill non-cordless phone plugged into any jack in the house.

Ask the Comcast people how they are getting around the Electrical Code, IBC & IBCR when they go in a second floor window.?

Outside to Inside requires a demarcation block with Ground.. Ideally bonded to the Electrical Ground for the house...

Instead of trying to make a work-a-round, I'd be calling the towns/state electrical inspector...

Put the onus back on the cable guys....

RTS

Or the output from the cordless phone coud be fed to the nearest house jack, back-feeding dial tone to any run-of-the-mill non-cordless phone plugged into any jack in the house.

I call cable company advise them of FCC and NEC code rules and have there l= azy ass installer come back and do it right or customer is going to sue the= living shit out of them when there panel does not dial out and I give them= 24 hours to fix it or customer back charges them for me to fix it properly= . amzing how fast comcast gets some one out.

I'll second that... The cable companies want to be phone companies, so they should hook up their phone service to the customers wiring so that ALL Jacks and the alarm work properly... I tell my customers that it will cost them for me to come out and fix a Comcast problem, I then point out they never had any problems before the cable guy came out and played phone tech :)

On Monday, August 27, 2012 3:56:19 PM UTC-4, (unknown) wrote:

ntrol Panel and a similar wireless device (transceiver) attached to the out= put jack of a Comcast cable box. The purpose is to take the ACP digital sig= nals that are normally transmitted over a land-line to a central station an= d, instead, transmit them to the receiving unit attached to the telephone j= ack at the rear of the Comcast cable box. This device would solve the follo= wing problem: Here in the Boston MA area the trend appears that Comcast is = taking away the land-line business of residential customers from Verizon. C= omcast installers, rather than placing their cable box (containing the dial=

-tone output jack) in the vicinity of the old Verizon interface (punch-down= terminals, two-binding-post black protector =96 where the outside drop mee= ts all the red/green wires), typically in the basement, they are taking the= route of least resistance by bringing their cable in through a 2nd floor w= indow of a room where the cable box is to be located. The customer's cordle= ss base station is then plugged into the output jack at the rear of the cab= le box, providing dial tone to all the cordless house phones When there is = no wall jack in the room, there is not even the opportunity to back feed di= al tone to the common junction point in the basement where the reds and gre= ens are all in parallel. On those occasions when there is a wall jack in th= e same room with the cable box, we can reconfigure the connections in the b= asement to provide line seizure. Sometimes Comcast installers will get it r= ight, rarely, back-feeding to a wall jack, and in the basement severing the= 4-conductor cable from the remaining group of reds/greens, and reconfiguri= ng to provide line-seizure. When the cable box resides in a part of the hou= se where it is impossible or cost-prohibitive to get dial tone to the alarm= system, and the customer does not want to pay for a cellular connection, t= he alternative for the customer is to forego the monitoring of the alarm sy= stem; hence a loss of revenue for us. It therefore would be nice to employ = some type of transceiver to ship the alarm signals from the ACP to a simila= r transceiver that would plug into the dial-tone output jack at the rear of= the cable box. It would have to be a duplex device, as the ACP needs to re= ceive the kiss-off tone from the central station. It would also be importan= t that we be able to access the ACP via telephone line from our office, for= remote programming. Any ideas or work-arounds? Thanks. Charlie.

Here in NY, Cablevision (according to their terms) is supposed to ask the c= lient if they have an alarm system and are to wire the telephone service t= o maintain that service and have the client check to see if the alarm is co= mmunicating with central before they leave the job. However .......... sinc= e they use a lot of subcontractors, they have no control over what THEY do = ... or don't do. So, they will typically do what you describe .... put the = telephone base station near the modem and have satillite phones throughout = the rest of the house.=20

When I get these calls I will start by telling my customers to call the cab= le company back to do the job right .... or I can come out and correct it b= ut will have to charge. I tell them that if they get any resistance from th= e cable company to let me know and I'll take care of it from there. Only a = couple of times have I had to contact Cablevision to read their terms to th= em. A few times the customer has had me do the work because they didn't wan= t to deal with the cable company and they've successfully been reimbursed b= y the cable company. I haven't lost any customers over this.