UPC reply to Emer O'Kelly Sindo article [MOD NOTE POST No 13 NO PERSONAL ATTACKS]

Antenna

I see UPC had a letter of reply in yesterday's Sindo to the claims of Emer O' Kelly (the former RTE TV newsreader etc) regarding UPC work outside her residence printed the previous Sunday.

Letter is attched. Article is attached and is also here:

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/my-home-looked-like-a-poltergeist-had-run-amok-in-it-2811971.html

JoeyJJ

Feel sorry for her however she shouldn't get on a high horse about being clamped, what did she expect she parked on double yellows.

You can 't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs however looks like she disliked UPC before the upgrade so she never wanted the omelette in the first place.

coylemj

I sympathise with her but I notice reading the article that the cables were being laid by Sierra and I have to say that of all the cable companies around, they are head and shoulders above the rest. A few years ago a cable company laid a cable across the N11 (Stillorgan Road) at the Priory exchange/Oatlands College junction and left an almighty mess behind them. You had to clench your buttocks and your teeth when driving across the ruts and bumps they left behind.

Within a few weeks Sierra arrived on the scene, cleaned up the mess and left the road in pristine condition. I assumed that the original contractor had paid a bond to DLR co. council who decided that the remedial work was unsatisfactory so they gave the money to Sierra to clean up the mess.

A few months ago Sierra did a lot of work in my estate for UPC, the usual digging of trenches etc.. There was some small disruption but it was professionally managed and they left the road in a superb condition, no complaints here.

Credit where it's due.

lucernarian

If Sierra had carried out a good job with one road repair, it's doesn't excuse or counteract the mess they made of that lady's house, which she has photographic evidence of. And I know Lombard St. well, parking spaces are certainly not easy to find and Dublin City Council were a little too liberal with the yellow line paint in the area. There are occasions where otherwise safe locations to park have double yellow lines, like outside closed-down, abandoned businesses which had a drive-in entrance that's no longer used. So I think there's justification to be annoyed at the car being clamped.

But what's hidden in all of this is how UPC were digging up the footpath because she refused consent for a replacement cable to be erected. Not even for reasons of asthetics, but because she "already had correspondence concerning what I considered UPC's incompetent and discourteous service". It was a mark of straightforward spitefulness. Unfortunately her article did not say if the consequences of the trunk cable being re-routed were explained to her, as it involved digging up the footpath right in front of the house which UPC are entitled to do with the relevant licenses from Dublin City Council.

For the sake of not letting UPC replace one black cable going across her house with another, she let the inevitable consequence of digging up the footpath happen. If I was vindicitive, I wouldn't sign up to UPC afterwards. I wouldn't cut my nose off to spite my face by forcing UPC to dig all around my house!

Having said that, oftentimes a cable passes a short distance over one house to go from one tap to the next. I wonder if it was possible to leave the old stretch across this property. So long as the cable wasn't damaged I imagine it wouldn't really affect the capacity or bandwidth of the whole cable segment. Perhaps UPC should reuse the occasional piece of old network to avoid all this hassle for them and for residents.

califano

BTW Party on tonite in Emer O'Kellys place on Lombard St:D

deanh

MOD EDIT: Post deleted: see post no 13

MacGyver

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

Having said that, oftentimes a cable passes a short distance over one house to go from one tap to the next. I wonder if it was possible to leave the old stretch across this property. So long as the cable wasn't damaged I imagine it wouldn't really affect the capacity or bandwidth of the whole cable segment. Perhaps UPC should reuse the occasional piece of old network to avoid all this hassle for them and for residents.

They were laying fiber so this would not have been an option as the old cable would be coax, and by the sound of this woman she would probably want compensation for them touching the cable in the first place.

lucernarian

She got the name of the upgraded cable wrong. I've heard numerous people talk about fibre optic cables being laid across their house, it's not fibre optic. Just new trunk coax that's capable of carrying higher frequencies for HD channels and higher capacity broadband. I wouldn't blame her for getting the name wrong, UPC's marketing doesn't help matters.

UPC's fibre remains entirely underground up to the local street cabinet (usually grey in upgraded areas, but green cabinets are also used). The new grey or black cables that run from this cabinet to the houses along a street or estate are conventional coax, capable of carrying higer frequencies than the old digital TV only 550MHz limited cable. That older cable can and does carry broadband from back in NTL days in a few areas, when the speeds were lower and didn't require many channels (aka frequencies).

bk

To_be_confirmed as she refused to have the trunk coax cable pass her house, they are probably now laying fibre cable in the trench in front of her house and will probably put in a new cabinet for her neighbours further down the street.

If you are going to the expense of digging a hole, might as well put in fibre, as most of the expense is manual labour.

lucernarian

From literally seeing UPC's contractors carrying out these works, I can tell you in the case of a cable being rerouted around a non-consenting householder, they only lay one duct for the 10 or 20 metres to get around the house and they feed the newer grey or black coax through it.

They wouldn't change the placement of the cabinet as they can't just move those around willy-nilly. They need planning permission first off, and at each new location a power supply has to be negotiated and arranged. The backhaul network planning and cabinet locations are done by completely different people in UPC and usually before the trunk cabling work is done also. if a contractor has issues in getting around a house then it's up to them to dig around it I understand.

If you walk around the smaller side-streets in Dublin where there is lots of terraced housing, you can see many places where there is a new 5 metre stretch of footpath, with new cable going underground after one tap and then emerging to connect to the next tap. No fibre or re-engineering needed for that.

I think moving a cabinet further on down a street to avoid an unwilling household *might* happen if the first house beside the planned cabinet did not want any new cabling going across their house and the next house to be served was perhaps 15 or 20 metres away. But Emer O'Kelly's in a terraced house and, knowing Lombard St., even if there was a nearby cabinet being relocated (which there isn't), it would end up avoiding her neighbours unless UPC dug a trench and ducting around the house to supply the neighbours anyway!

So in this case I can say with certainty that there was no fibre optic cable involved.

tallaghtmick

"Emer O'Kelly found herself reduced to tears by the noise, dirt and disruption caused by digging outside her house"

MOD EDIT: Post potentially could cause legal trouble.

jack presley

It's also fine for some being able to work from home in the first place.

icdg

Guys, when talking about someone, please remember to play the ball not the person. I will be watching this thread and may edit/delete posts or close the thread if there are personal attacks or comments that could cause Boards (or yourself) legal trouble.

hightower1

Is she for real? I mean wtf like. Companies like Eircom, UPC, board Gas etc all HAVE to expand their service lines to offer better and cheaper products to us. So Im sure she demands better cheaper products but yet doesnt want to have any impact on her life at all for this? She needs to get off her high horse.

Where I live the council are digging up the main city road to widen it and add in extra footpath space. To minimize traffic disruption they did this for 1 month during the night from 9pm - 3am. It wasnt a mini digger mind you BUT you just accept these things. I wanted to live in the city center, I use the street being dug so I just deal with it and understand that works have to be done. It will always effect someone and I just happen to be in the minority group so I dont whinge in a paper or cry in my apartment I just accept it, sleep in the back bedroom while the works are on and understand that it wont be forever. Boo hoo for the well to do writer. My heart bleeds.




Massive digger? I read the article before I looked at the pics and honestly from what she described I thought it was a mid sized digger swinging a huge bucket past her window while she coward in there crying... I felt sorry... then I saw the digger in the first pic....
















Come off it love.

tallaghtmick

icdg wrote: »

Guys, when talking about someone, please remember to play the ball not the person. I will be watching this thread and may edit/delete posts or close the thread if there are personal attacks or comments that could cause Boards (or yourself) legal trouble.

dammit i got braped (boards rape):pac: ill have a good talking to the little ****e that wrote that horrible comment;)

Hugh Cream

feel sorry for her but its something that has to happen, obviously not at the expense of anyone's nerves or patience.
saying that though, she seems to have had a problem with the plans before they even began work, which is ignoring the fact that more people than just her are benefiting.
or rather than just ignoring the fact, simply not giving a damn, which bothers me.

who is this

Honestly those pictures look like an earthquake hit.

And unless she wants to suggest that such was the intensity of the work (i.e. an earthquake), the problem is obviously her house (I don't mean that in a "state of her house" way: I mean I would genuinely be concerned if that were my house).

I've had that kind of stuff go on outside my house countless times. Noisy, but I didn't have things falling off the wall.

Also, I have to wonder what kind of journalist reports on their own woes. She hasn't seemingly done any reporting work (such as other complaints about UPC, if this is typical etc.) other than just recount what happened to her.

Everyone has bad experiences with businesses. We don't all write articles about them. What happened is nothing special (i.e. a company acted in a way she didn't like) and I certainly couldn't care less: I've my own grievances with companies to worry about.

alan partridge aha

Cannot stand the b**ch

ted1

alan partridge aha wrote: »

Cannot stand the b**ch

then why dig up a 2 year old thread about her?

icdg

We don't drag up old threads.