Phone company took away the outside box!

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jan 29, 2005 Posts: 10

The phone company was Comcast. I still have my broadband and cable through them.

I hadn't been able to reply because yesterday my cable was out! I would think they're just messing with me, but they said it was an area outage.

There's actually an old NID near where the removed one was. Different color coding but I should be able to figure it out. Pouring out today, so I guess it'll wait.

Posts: 14 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Mar 14, 2005 Posts: 14

I could write a 42,000 page manifesto if i documented all of the problems i had when i was with Comcast.

Posts: 134 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Mar 23, 2005 Posts: 134

WaylandDad wrote:

The phone company was Comcast. I still have my broadband and cable through them.

I hadn't been able to reply because yesterday my cable was out! I would think they're just messing with me, but they said it was an area outage.

There's actually an old NID near where the removed one was. Different color coding but I should be able to figure it out. Pouring out today, so I guess it'll wait.

I also had Comcast in Everett, MA. When I got rid of their phone service, but kept cable/internet, they also came and took the NID. The house next door burned last fall (Not entirely) and the family was displaced. As soon as they disconnected their cable/phone service, Comcast swooped down and took theirs also. So I guess it's a fairly standard practice for them. It would have been nice though if they could have been more professional when disconnecting your NID. In my case, they cut the wires clean.

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jan 29, 2005 Posts: 10

NHTracker wrote:

So I guess it's a fairly standard practice for them. It would have been nice though if they could have been more professional when disconnecting your NID. In my case, they cut the wires clean.

It's a fairly clean cut. If it's standard practice then I don't want to bash them. I'll hook it up so that I don't get interference from it not being grounded.

I take it you don't have your Vonage hooked into your house wiring? If you do, did it hurt your service when they cut the wires?

Posts: 196 · Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2005 7:59 pm Post subject:

NHTracker wrote:

I also had Comcast in Everett, MA. When I got rid of their phone service, but kept cable/internet, they also came and took the NID. The house next door burned last fall (Not entirely) and the family was displaced. As soon as they disconnected their cable/phone service, Comcast swooped down and took theirs also. So I guess it's a fairly standard practice for them. It would have been nice though if they could have been more professional when disconnecting your NID. In my case, they cut the wires clean.

The box on the side of your house was not a NID. With Comcast phone, that little box they took off your house has some pretty sophisticated electronics in it. It supports multiple cards for additional lines or other types of service. The box is powered by the power injected onto the coax cable Be careful however as they don't always remember to put a DC choke back on the feed to your house and you can end up with power feeding into your cable modem, tv's, etc.

Normally, Comcast will run a wire from their box over to the real NID on your house.

In any case, for the investment in those boxes, I can understand why they swoop down and remove them.

Posts: 492 · Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2005 12:56 am Post subject:

After all it belonged to them. You must have had their digital telephone service. They are not like your usual telephone company. In fact they're not a telephone company at all. The box is where they hook the cable and some electronics up to your PSTN telephone wiring. They had every right to retrieve it from a non-paying customer.

Posts: 68 · Full Forum Member Joined: Feb 14, 2005 Posts: 68

In that case, it's not such a big deal, I thought they were actually pulling the real NIDs...

Posts: 482 · Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2005 2:05 am Post subject:

WaylandDad wrote:

The phone company was Comcast.

There's actually an old NID near where the removed one was. Different color coding but I should be able to figure it out.

Well now that explains it all, including the fried Vonage router.

Details, details....

Posts: 605 · Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2005 6:45 am Post subject:

You can buy an outside box at radio shack for 10.00 if you want to. Here is a link to radioshack.com that shows the outside block which im sure you can buy at your local store.

http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F008%5F008%5F001%5F005&product%5Fid=279%2D430