Thursday, October 20, 2011

This is what Time Warner Cable's recent East Village meltdown looked like

Remember back on Oct. 6, when a good chunk of the East Village/Lower East Side was without Time Warner Cable/Road Runner service?

OK, you don't have to swear.

Anyway, there's a post on at the Time Warner Cable Untangled blog.

TWC's director of digital communications, Jeff Simmermon, walks us through what happened... and how much of a mess it is to quickly repair... He starts by posting a photo of what you typically see under an NYC manhole (no snickering!), namely a mass of unmarked cables that belong to everyone from Time Warner to Verizon to RCN...

Here is the area where the fire happened that knocked out our service... the fire melted their fiber-optic cable...


...and here's an upclose look at the affected fiber cable...


This is what a healthy (unmelted!) fiber-optic cable looks like...


...and here's the cable after the Oct. 6 fire...


Per Simmermon: "It took the better part of the day to identify the problem, dig in, seperate the cable out and splice in a new piece of fiber-optic cable. Each of those hair-width fibers has to be reconnected to precisely the correct wire, or else the whole thing doesn’t work. Imagine re-connecting a severed ponytail and you’ve got the basic idea."

Oh, and the stuff in the top photos that look like remnants from a wig? Insulation for some of Verizon's cable.

All photos via Untangled. Thanks to EV Grieve reader Creature for the link.
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6 comments:

  1. Mykola ( Mick) DementiukOctober 20, 2011 at 7:14 AM

    You want to see a cable fire? Look at February 27, 1975 it brought a fire in the telephone building at 204 Second Avenue, at East 13th Street. We were knocked out for about 3 weeks, that was some story back in the days before computers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousOctober 20, 2011 at 9:27 AM

    Why is the cable all gooey in the middle? yuck!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lux LivingOctober 20, 2011 at 11:19 AM

    Great photos of Ke$ha!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Laura Goggin PhotographyOctober 20, 2011 at 1:53 PM

    Yikes.

    ReplyDelete
  5. glammaOctober 20, 2011 at 2:14 PM

    looking at the pics i cant tell the difference between this and the ihop post

    ReplyDelete
  6. Crazy EddieOctober 20, 2011 at 4:36 PM

    Ke$ha-or lamprey eels

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamprey

    ReplyDelete

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