Forum Down-Time 25th August

That'll be 3:00 AM my time, so I won't be awake to notice. Thanks for the warning, anyway.

Here it's squirrels that gnaw on wires (I kid you not). Their front teeth grow extremely quickly. Wires and cables are an ideal size/texture to wear them down efficiently. They're also more readily available in most locations than any of the suitable natural materials. My internet service is delivered via coax cable, and usually when the service goes down, the service tech will discover squirrel teeth marks all the way through the covering of the cable in front of the house. After he's replaced it, he tucks it under the telephone cable so that the squirrels will attack that first. Relatively few people in this neighborhood have landline phones, so it's difficult to tell how often that wire is affected. Some of us are cell (mobile) only and some use VOIP. I'm in the first group.
 
When I was working in Networking there seemed to be an inordinately high number of incidents where someone was drilling/digging and cut through and underground cable so its not just creatures etc that can cause outages.
 
When I was working in Networking there seemed to be an inordinately high number of incidents where someone was drilling/digging and cut through and underground cable so its not just creatures etc that can cause outages.
There are no buried cables in my area except in the few blocks of historic restoration in the city next door, so for the residential areas and for most business areas it's nearly all squirrels. Very occasionally a very tall truck will pull down a cable that's draped across a street, though.
 
I know what you mean about the squirrels, Marianna. They would chew on my parents wooden railings something fierce. My parents lived on the edge of a woods. There were thousands of trees the squirrels could have chewed on instead, but nope.

About your phone and cable line, is it possible to put some kind of metal wrap around them? I know there is some flexible hard plastic wrap that some use to make cable management neater. Bet there is some metal stuff you could get as well. It comes in a spiral flex that you wrap around what you want.
 
About your phone and cable line, is it possible to put some kind of metal wrap around them? I know there is some flexible hard plastic wrap that some use to make cable management neater. Bet there is some metal stuff you could get as well. It comes in a spiral flex that you wrap around what you want.
That would be up to the cable and phone companies, and they're not likely to spend anything on prevention. That would constitute customer service!
 
Back
Top