At 9PM yesterday, we lost home internet along with much of the greater Seattle area. Still out (I'm tethering over wireless). We figured it was probably a fiber cut, but not a whole lot of information was circulating about it.
Today we learned: at least three cities were disrupted by a single box in the middle of Renton:
https://washington.comcast.com/2023/01/18/service-outage-in-the-burien-kent-and-renton-areas/
Who would win: Comcast service for all of Seattle vs one shiny diggie boy.
@Goldkin normally they scan for cables/services and dont trust the maps.... dont they? (they do that here)
@Leviamicky Yeah, I'd assume they tried to do so here and either didn't find it or discovered that fiber doesn't scan like power lines do?
It's also probably not the work crew's fault, nor most of Comcast's. Specs and city plans can be inaccurate, underground lines can drift over time, and it's hard to get an accurate reading below concrete without, well, digging. I'm assuming they used their best judgment on this and only knew it was a problem after they struck the line.
Comcast probably had to haggle with the city to run a single line. Typically there's redundancy in these systems, so the fact there wasn't here is... a thing.