No, this is not a tutorial so if that is what you are looking for you may stop without fear of missing something. In fact, it is just some ruminations about things I have seen and who really pays the price for them.

So many years, so many different systems. One thing that they all have in common is illegal hook-ups. These can range from the downright ugly to very professional. When someone makes one of these connections to steal service they are of course reducing themselves to a mere thief.

But who really pays the price…

The cable company does have to devote a certain amount of manpower and expense to address this problem. They would most likely say that this cost will contribute to a raise in pricing for the system. In other words, the legal customers will end up helping to foot the bill for the illegal ones. I guess this is true in any business. Retail stores will have to cover the cost if shoplifting is accounting for 20 percent of their wares leaving without being paid for.

My opinion is, however, much darker. Forget about the money. What is really important to people these days is quality of service. With the explosion of internet (cable modems) and VoIP (phone service) in todays modern CATV systems the real problem here is what happens when someone makes a connection without any concern about what will happen to the people in their neighborhood.

Many times, these connections have the immediate effect of degrading service due to poorly shielded connectors drawing external signals into the system. People in the direct area will most likely see slowdowns in their modem service due to packet loss or modems not working anymore at all because of signal reduction.

Way back when I saw a case where a customer’s son got a pirate (black) box and put a splitter in to feed it. He ran a line up to his bedroom and hooked up his box. Poor dad. He couldn’t figure out why suddenly the picture in his living room was terrible. He called and complained in a way that would make a long distance trucker flinch. He was livid that while he was paying for a service he could barely see his picture. I won’t go into detail what he said but you can be sure it included an awful lot of things like, &%!!*, and **$#@!!! to name a few. He wanted heads to roll and by hell or high water he would see some blood flow.
When the cable company dispatched a technician to find out what the problem was he was, well, not happy. It took the tech a few minutes to locate the problem using a leak detector. It seems his moron of a son put a splitter in without the benefit of a single fitting. The lines were cut and taped to the splitter and to top it off the splitter itself was in backwards. After taking some pictures and repairing the line the man looked at his television and said something to the affect of “it’s about time” and “why should I pay for such crap”. You know, the basic mindless rants by an angry person.

When shown the pictures and asked where the line that had been cut in whent he got a bit quiet. Suddenly he was apologetic. He was also directed to read the portion of his work order outlining possible fines that included jail time up to six months.

He assured the tech that this would never occur again and would you please accept my sincerest apology. The son however, was not so lucky. He was never heard from again.

:)

Another time, there was a small handful of renegades that ended up getting blackballed from the system they were operating in but not before doing some serious damage. The system they were working in placed a bounty on the permanent removal of illegal hookups. It wasn’t a terribly large amount and there had to be proof in the form of a digital image as well as the address it ran to not showing up as a repeat offender.

What they did was both illegal and simple. They got their images and paperwork in order. They disconnected and repaired any damage. Then they applied AC to the illegal hookup until it either burned up or they got bored. Anything connected to the line was burned by the voltage entering it. Oh how they raked in the bounty. Until they burned down someones house. They were probably back to work in less than a week in another part of the country.