Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months
I recently had my own host of cable internet issues.<p>So about 3 months ago the RJ45 cable in my cable modem <i>melted</i>. I thought it was a freak accident. I checked all of my networking equipment, checked my outlets, etc. No problems. So I installed a new cable and then everything was fine.<p>Cue 2 weeks ago. Connectivity became intermittent and then finally I had no internet for almost a week. Comcast wouldn&#x27;t be able to send anyone out for a month. So I started digging around for the problem. A little over a year ago they sent out techs to work on my neighbors internet and in the process foolishly <i>cut</i> my coax. So I started from the cable tap and worked my way backwards.<p>There wasn&#x27;t a continuity problem from what I could tell, no one either intentionally or unintentionally cut the cable. Then I look on the back of my house where the coax from the street is bonded to my home&#x27;s grounding rod. Everything to the right of the bond was completely melted and still super hot. NOT GOOD.<p>So I did some testing of the bonding wire to the ground, the resistance was 37 ohms (should be much less than this). And there were no other electrical problems. My thought at the time was somehow power was being backfed from the cable tap to my home. So I removed the cable from the street and disconnected everything inside that was touch this cable.<p>Almost immediately I start getting voltage drops in my house, can&#x27;t even run the microwave. That&#x27;s when I realized what was <i>really</i> going on. The cable line was being used as a return path because the neutral for my neighborhood was at least partially severed.<p>It was so bad that if I increased voltage load in my home past a certain point then the streetlights in the front of my home would completely turn off.. Yes I could turn city infrastructure off and on by toggling the voltage load in my home.<p>The power company within a few hours had a crew come out to diagnose and fix the issue since it&#x27;s actually potentially dangerous. They confirmed for me it was indeed a bad neutral. As soon as they replaced it I spliced my coax line, reconnected it, and everything worked perfectly.