I love that you had to check the app to see all the outages.Heh. Not in my part of Lafayette, so not impacted, forunately. At least for now. Really wish we had underground utility lines in my neighborhood. Powerwalls will have to do.
EDIT: Perhaps I spoke too soon. I just noticed the lights flicker and my servers' UPS clicked. Then checked the Tesla app, and we've actually had four outages since about 4:30 this afternoon, each "a few seconds".
Bruce.
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03-09-2023 - No Stormwatch for Northern CA?
- Thread starter jboy210
- Start date
seenhear
Member
I grew up in Sonoma County, CA in the 1980's. I recall the winter of '82/83 quite well. It was not much different from this one, and as I was young, I felt that was "normal". We had several similar (if not quite as bad) years through the '80's.
I remember many many times when we would do homework or play a boardgame by candlelight as the power was out during a rainstorm.
So it's been a while, but this isn't totally unique.
seenhear
Member
Since when does comcast service require PG&E power to the house?
We get power from a pole in our backyard, and comcast from a pole in our front yard.
2 power outages (this Tuesday and last Tuesday) both times Comcast indicated we would get our internet back when power returned. Sure enough it was true (first time anyway... this time power and comcast are both still off, so I'm assuming they'll come back simultaneously again).
It sure is frustrating to have this amazing solar+battery backup system, and not have the internet with it. We are able to go for days with no PG&E, but don't have internet.
At least we can watch broadcast TV, but kids can't do homework and wife and I can't do workwork.
We get power from a pole in our backyard, and comcast from a pole in our front yard.
2 power outages (this Tuesday and last Tuesday) both times Comcast indicated we would get our internet back when power returned. Sure enough it was true (first time anyway... this time power and comcast are both still off, so I'm assuming they'll come back simultaneously again).
It sure is frustrating to have this amazing solar+battery backup system, and not have the internet with it. We are able to go for days with no PG&E, but don't have internet.
At least we can watch broadcast TV, but kids can't do homework and wife and I can't do workwork.TLDR: Comcast isn't regulated as a utility, and doesn't have PUC mandated backup times or systems.Since when does comcast service require PG&E power to the house?
We get power from a pole in our backyard, and comcast from a pole in our front yard.
2 power outages (this Tuesday and last Tuesday) both times Comcast indicated we would get our internet back when power returned. Sure enough it was true (first time anyway... this time power and comcast are both still off, so I'm assuming they'll come back simultaneously again).
It sure is frustrating to have this amazing solar+battery backup system, and not have the internet with it. We are able to go for days with no PG&E, but don't have internet.
Phone companies were and are required most places to provide emergency call support that includes functioning when the power is out. Cable companies lobbied not to be regulated as such, and don't have to provide service in the absence of power. I suspect that if the legislation was coming up these days with WiFi calling and emergency information via the Internet, it probably wouldn't fly.
Getting your internet through a phone company "ought" to get you some amount of backup time. Here it is supposed to be four hours, but in practice it has been closer to five minutes despite frequent calls to the phone company for service on the batteries. Lots of finger pointing within the phone company about which group is responsible for testing and replacing the batteries.
I would suggest a backup internet system like an LTE USB adapter, but that depends on cell towers staying powered. During the recent Northern California fires many of the towers didn't and the California legislature was holding hearings on requiring backup power that finally passed two years ago.
The law now requires 72 hours of backup for phones and VoIP. As Comcast provides, and advertises, VoIP, they will have to comply, but I believe only in high fire danger areas. So, not much help to most Silicon Valley addresses...
All the best,
BG
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They probably don't require power to your house, but they do require power to their networking equipment in your neighborhood. This equipment probably is affected by the same power outage. Supposedly optical fiber service is generally less susceptibly to these failures since a larger part of the network is passive. I switched from Comcast to AT&T fiber partially for this reason.
In our neighborhood, Comcast Internet would often stay up even if the house lost power, such that for years, I put my modem/router on a small desktop UPS (which could keep them powered for several hours).Since when does comcast service require PG&E power to the house?
We get power from a pole in our backyard, and comcast from a pole in our front yard.
2 power outages (this Tuesday and last Tuesday) both times Comcast indicated we would get our internet back when power returned. Sure enough it was true (first time anyway... this time power and comcast are both still off, so I'm assuming they'll come back simultaneously again).
It sure is frustrating to have this amazing solar+battery backup system, and not have the internet with it. We are able to go for days with no PG&E, but don't have internet.
However, it hasn't been the case the last week or so. For our longest power outage in 20 years - 36 hours last week - it was up initially, but went down about an hour in, and then took a few hours after power came back for Internet to come up. And then we had another 4 hour outage yesterday morning, Comcast went down simultaneously, and then didn't come til an hour ago, which was a full 30 hours after the power came back up.
What really sucks is that I'd signed up for T-mobile Home Internet (5G based wireless) in December on a $25/mo for life promo, and it in fact helped us through several storms/outages in January and February (though Comcast was still up for a few of them. But then a month with no outages, I cancelled the service thinking the worst of winter was over - and then we have these two Comcast outages in the past week. Granted when Comcast goes down, the T-mobile data becomes extremely congested, if the towers even remain up, so may have been futile anyways, but at least could have tried it as a backup....
I am so glad I am finally not dependent on the rest of the neighborhood to keep my internet working. We got Starlink about a year ago and it has been a pretty great alternative.
seenhear
Member
Nowhere on their site can I find any mention of speeds (upstream and downstream) that one can expect. $600 in hardware + $120/mo is a lot. I pay $60/mo for 200mbps down / 6mbps up, no contract.
What speeds are you getting with Starlink, and roughly where do you live?
seenhear
Member
Comcast is my only hardwired option at my address. Neighbor on the other side of my block has AT&T fiber to the node, but I can't get it.
Only other option would be Starlink or 5G wireless from TMO.
charlesj
Active Member
Yes, cable companies like Comcast does need power in every distribution place as they have amps and repeaters that needs power. Even fiber needs power, amps and repeaters but they may be much further removed from your home than comcast cable repeaters (substations/).
Here in Monterey recently power went down in a very large area so did comcast. At other time when power is more localized to the power grid to my house cable has not been affected as their repeaters were in another power grid area.
Here in Monterey recently power went down in a very large area so did comcast. At other time when power is more localized to the power grid to my house cable has not been affected as their repeaters were in another power grid area.
Same for me. It sucks. And I am surprised someone in the Valley also has such limited choices. My kid in Redwood City has AT&T fiber with 1G up and down. We get 1.2 G down and 0,035G up. Uploading is so slow.
We had a couple more seconds-long outages this week. Mar 21 was the crazy weather day around here so I guess that's not surprising, but it was weird to get one of those yesterday and another today. (This is not normal behavior for this area.) The Powerwalls handled it no problem, and the power came back almost before the app had time to show the change in status. Wonder if this is due to some grid disruptions in the vicininty.
Bruce.
Bruce.
If you have comcast, Starlink is not a great option. If you are served by DSL, or dialup, it is a different story. What Starlink can provide is a fraction of Comcast, both in terms of latency and throughput. I would pester AT&T to bring fiber across the road, call, write letters, get your unserved neighbors to do the same. Worst case, look into a micro-ISP.
All the best,
BG
charlesj
Active Member
Impressive specs for that AT&T fiber, up and down. Too bad it is not compatible with Tivo.
why would it not bee compatible with Tivo?
I just switched to ATT fiber and cut all my ties to Xfinity. Using YoutubeTV, HBOmax, Netflix, and Prime
I suspect he means Tivo's DVR features require a cable system cablecard, or in some cases use NTSC/ATSC tuner from over-the-air broadcast. None of the satellite or over-the-top TV programming options with AT&T can be scheduled and recorded using Tivo
I have 0 wired options where I live, in the Santa Cruz mountains. Surfnet was our other option, and they provided point to point antenna networks that worked ok, sometimes.
With Starlink, I occasionally see 120 Mbps down, but during congested times its more like 5-10.
Upload speeds are the worst, and often around 1-3 mbps.
Still, all those speeds are comparable with Surfnet, and this starlink setup required just 2 powered ground stations, one at my house and the Starlink ground station. Before there were 6 or 7 jumps between us and a Surfnet hub station. If any of them lost power, we had no internet.
We had Tivo for decades until last year. We have since switched to YouTube TV and prefer it. You can get to your shows on all your devices with their app. And get to your shows when you travel.
seenhear
Member
Getting a little off topic, but:
If anyone is more into DIY / self-monitored solutions for a Tivo-like DVR, I can highly recommend HDHomeRun. I've been using it for years. Originally I had a CableCARD tuner when I lived outside of the SF broadcast range (Santa Rosa). But now in Silicon Valley I simply have a small roof-top antenna and get the basic channels we want/need for free. Comcast is for internet only, and happy for that.
HDHomeRun is a great tuner that provides LAN access to your channels and recordings from any device on your LAN/wifi. For remote access I use Plex which allows me to tune my OTA live channels if I want, and also access to my dVR recordings, all remotely. To run the DVR portion of HDHR, you need a NAS or a Nvidia Shield Pro, both of which can also run Plex for you.
(OT post I know but relevant to the tivo feedback from a couple of regular members of this subforum so hopefully no one minds this OT post)
Ditto, same exact thing (had TiVo whole home setup for more than a decade, begrudgingly switched to youtube TV last year when my last cable card went out and my service provider told me "we dont sell TV packages anymore to new users, only internet, you have TV because you were grandfathered in before our bankruptcy"...
I have been loving Youtube TV, I thought it would be annoying but its been great. I do have 1gb fiber internet up and down at my house, but the TV quality has been stellar, and I am kind of a snob about picture quality. In fact, the picture quality has been better than using the cablecard + tivo all around.
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