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Comment by teeray | Hacker News Reader

Part of the issue is that there isn’t really a professional class that is dedicated to home Internet like other home services. For Joe Homeowner, they call the plumber to put in a new sink, an electrician to hang a light fixture, the HVAC guy to put in A/C… and Comcast when the Internet is acting up? This would be equivalent to calling the city’s water department when your toilet is clogged with a Barbie doll.

Electricians are the closest match, but usually telephone wiring is the closest experience they have to running Ethernet. They know nothing about properly setting up APs and the RF considerations.

So when building houses, builders don’t bother, because getting that labor is specialized and homeowners are satisfied with the equivalent of a port-a-potty from Comcast in the living room because they don’t know any better.

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When we built my new home office (above the garage), I bought a couple of big spools of Cat6A and told the electricians where I wanted them run. I also made sure they were aware of bend radius requirements, etc. (though if they managed to bend shielded Cat6A that far I'd be impressed). I've been doing the termination myself.

The ATT guy just drilled a hole in the side of my wall to pass the fiber through. I rent, so I don’t really care, but if the plumber did that I’d be pissed.

This. They wanted to drill a hole in my place to run a line from the pole. The line would go right past a window. It just seemed unprofessional.

I mean, do you expect them to alter the laws of physics to your preferred taste? Most overhead installs must attach to the closest point on your home to the pole.

If their experience was like mine someone from the ISP showed up unannounced and just started putting a hole in their house. They then called the ISP to ask if this was legit, and the response was "we can't answer that for you, maybe you should call the cops".

In this case, yeah, it would be unprofessional and they'd be pissed :)

Yes, actually, I do. Not alter the laws of physics, but run the cable where it makes sense. If that means running it in a conduit outside the house for a few meters to get to a sensible spot, then that's what they're going to have to do. They don't just get to put a hole in your wall "wherever".

I've had plumbers tear out drywall and then leave it that way, because they don't do drywall, and it's my impression from others that's normal.

And the drywall guy is his brother!

I looked it up and there is a whole industry of "low voltage" or cable networking installers.

I think it's more a matter of cost and that people wouldn't think to do it if their internet mostly works.

In case people are curious, I had several lines of ethernet added throughout my home I wanted to add (cameras outside, ethernet port in garage, etc.) and I was charged $100 per line (they called them drops). This included going into my attic and doing as much as possible passing the ethernet inside the walls. When they went outside, they used conduit. I think most people would actually save money by dropping from 1Gbps to 200Mbps and using those savings to pay for a wired backhaul and good mesh network.

Part of the problem is that even if you know this is what you want, it's a classic hiring problem.

You're typically doing this once every what-- 20 years-- so you don't have a "default guy" and odds are you're one of maybe 3 households in your block of 450 houses who are even considering the problem, so it's not like you can ask your neighbours.

What the market needs is a national franchise, maybe implemented as a co-op model-- enforcing some basic level of "predictably not great, but not terrible", and offering a one-stop pricing and quoting system. You know they won't be the cheapest or best, but the franchise structure sells confidence. If they try to take you for a ride, you can escalate to the brand, who has leverage over them, to get satisfaction before having to duke it out with the local Contractor Licensing Authority.

The niche to search for is “low-voltage electrician.” They do all sorts of professional installations of non-powered wiring.

Yes, there are guys who specializes on security, CCTV, smart home, etc. They should charge properly. Nobody will call them for lying few meters of RJ45.

A recent wiring overhaul at my house saw the electrican bundling about 6 cables with my cat6a runs. Never been happier that I went with shielded; no apparent issues despite zero clearance, but imagine non-shielded buried in a wall somewhere, undiagnosable

It's probably something of a generational thing. The fairly young electrician who the contractor who did a few fairly large projects I used seemed to know what he was doing. It's probably not perfect but it seems to work fine. Everything isn't wired but the cable comes into my office where my modem/switch are and it goes off to ports next to a couple of complexes of electronics downstairs that also have local switches.

I still use wireless a lot but quite a bit of the higher bandwidth gear is wired.

Yeah, I learned that if I want something a certain way I make sure they include it in the quote and check while they're working just like a General Contractor would do. For things like fiber conduit I'm going to make sure the driveway people bury it.

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