After a harrowing week of trying and failing to get an installation team to activate my cable internet package, in an apartment that previously received the same service from the same provider, I'm curious about what is actually involved in this procedure. NB: I am not in the US, but I have to guess that this technology is more or less the same everywhere.
I'd always assumed that when a company sends somebody to activate your internet it's basically a really expensive way to pay somebody to plug in your modem for you, but there's no self-service option in my location. My apartment is already wired for cable and I know the person here previously had internet/phone/television provided by the same company I'm using. What threw me for a loop, when the technician came today to attempt installation, was that he first spent some time outside the apartment doing... something, together with the complex's maintenance team, and then, before he started with the plugging-in-of-the-modem phase, he did something else with the apartment's electrical panel (I don't actually know what this panel is and wasn't in the room when he unscrewed and opened it. It's called an electrical panel in Spanish, is next to but distinct from the circuit breakers, and is covered by a sheet of metal screwed in on four sides - it's obviously not meant to be opened regularly). What was he doing with those two steps, and how does this process work in general?
I'd always assumed that when a company sends somebody to activate your internet it's basically a really expensive way to pay somebody to plug in your modem for you, but there's no self-service option in my location. My apartment is already wired for cable and I know the person here previously had internet/phone/television provided by the same company I'm using. What threw me for a loop, when the technician came today to attempt installation, was that he first spent some time outside the apartment doing... something, together with the complex's maintenance team, and then, before he started with the plugging-in-of-the-modem phase, he did something else with the apartment's electrical panel (I don't actually know what this panel is and wasn't in the room when he unscrewed and opened it. It's called an electrical panel in Spanish, is next to but distinct from the circuit breakers, and is covered by a sheet of metal screwed in on four sides - it's obviously not meant to be opened regularly). What was he doing with those two steps, and how does this process work in general?