Mysterious spray paint markings on road

[MossRoad]

Here in my part of East Texas, they started running Fiber Optic down the roads. This included drilling under the road to run the line from one side to the other. Since there isn't anything else in the area, there is a chance that this might be it. In my case, we were able to connect to the fiber optic for unbelievably fast internet that costs us $75 a month.

AT&T just ran fiber through our entire neighborhood and told us we'd have to convert from copper to fiber by the end of August, as all copper services were going away. We ditched our land line to a cell line years ago, but still had internet over copper. We never had a problem with it. Wife works from home. Streaming TVs. Adult children visit. Never had speed issues and it was only 100mb service.

They said they were going to upgrade us to fiber for free to 2G service for the same price at something like $89 per month. That's 20X faster. We weren't having any problems at the current speed, so I asked for a 1G plan. $62 a month. So we got 10X faster for about $25 less.

The installer never showed up on appointed day. And if he had, no utilities had been marked. I stopped the two AT&T college kids on scooters that have been roaming the neighborhood signing everyone up and told them the guy was a no show. So they poked some buttons and rescheduled. Guy showed up and laid fiber down one the lawn and across the driveway. Said we could drive over it. A week later some utility markers appeared and Saturday we left for some groceries, came home, and the cable was buried....

Monday, the gas company came out and marked the gas line.
The installer had crossed it twice. Luckily, nothing got cut.

Internet service has gone out several times since and wife has had to travel in to work.

All-in-all, not a great exp experience.

 

[Dftodd]

AT&T just ran fiber through our entire neighborhood and told us we'd have to convert from copper to fiber by the end of August, as all copper services were going away. We ditched our land line to a cell line years ago, but still had internet over copper. We never had a problem with it. Wife works from home. Streaming TVs. Adult children visit. Never had speed issues and it was only 100mb service.

They said they were going to upgrade us to fiber for free to 2G service for the same price at something like $89 per month. That's 20X faster. We weren't having any problems at the current speed, so I asked for a 1G plan. $62 a month. So we got 10X faster for about $25 less.

The installer never showed up on appointed day. And if he had, no utilities had been marked. I stopped the two AT&T college kids on scooters that have been roaming the neighborhood signing everyone up and told them the guy was a no show. So they poked some buttons and rescheduled. Guy showed up and laid fiber down one the lawn and across the driveway. Said we could drive over it. A week later some utility markers appeared and Saturday we left for some groceries, came home, and the cable was buried....

Monday, the gas company came out and marked the gas line.
The installer had crossed it twice. Luckily, nothing got cut.

Internet service has gone out several times since and wife has had to travel in to work.

All-in-all, not a great exp experience.

We ran into the growing pains of fiber going out on occasion in the rental neighborhood we were living in for a couple years.

They were still building homes in the neighborhood when we moved in. Most of the outages were someone either clipping the line while they were building one of the houses.

Or them shutting the system down for a bit to add in the newer homes.

I've lost fiber at our rural address a couple of times in the past two years.

Once was a system malfunction. The outage lasted a couple hours.

The other time (outage for a couple days) was a driver malfunction

Someone missed the corner for our road and plowed through network hub that handled the area.

I bet their insurance company was pizzed

 

[WM75Guy]

AT&T just ran fiber through our entire neighborhood and told us we'd have to convert from copper to fiber by the end of August, as all copper services were going away. We ditched our land line to a cell line years ago, but still had internet over copper. We never had a problem with it. Wife works from home. Streaming TVs. Adult children visit. Never had speed issues and it was only 100mb service.

They said they were going to upgrade us to fiber for free to 2G service for the same price at something like $89 per month. That's 20X faster. We weren't having any problems at the current speed, so I asked for a 1G plan. $62 a month. So we got 10X faster for about $25 less.

The installer never showed up on appointed day. And if he had, no utilities had been marked. I stopped the two AT&T college kids on scooters that have been roaming the neighborhood signing everyone up and told them the guy was a no show. So they poked some buttons and rescheduled. Guy showed up and laid fiber down one the lawn and across the driveway. Said we could drive over it. A week later some utility markers appeared and Saturday we left for some groceries, came home, and the cable was buried....

Monday, the gas company came out and marked the gas line.
The installer had crossed it twice. Luckily, nothing got cut.

Internet service has gone out several times since and wife has had to travel in to work.

All-in-all, not a great exp experience.

We also got fiber. I ask for utility locates before burying the 2 service cables to the house and shop. They said it wasn't necessary as they only bury the cable 6" underground. Wonder how long before I hit one.

 

[WinterDeere]

Monday, the gas company came out and marked the gas line.
The installer had crossed it twice. Luckily, nothing got cut.

Fiber is only put about 10 inches down, IIRC. I suspect gas has to be set way deeper than that.

 

[rontaki]

Fiber is only put about 10 inches down, IIRC. I suspect gas has to be set way deeper than that.

Often, fiber causes gas.

 

[Oaktree]

AT&T just ran fiber through our entire neighborhood and told us we'd have to convert from copper to fiber by the end of August, as all copper services were going away. We ditched our land line to a cell line years ago, but still had internet over copper. We never had a problem with it. Wife works from home. Streaming TVs. Adult children visit. Never had speed issues and it was only 100mb service.
....
Internet service has gone out several times since and wife has had to travel in to work.

All-in-all, not a great exp experience.

You were lucky, I don't miss copper at all. Then again, you may be in an area where the infrastucture was newer, lots of the lines here date back to the 70s or before. When cable finally came here about 12 years ago the trunk lines were all fiber.
All in all, I've had very few issues with fiber internet, either at home or at worksites.

Are all the utilities (electric, phone, etc.) buried where you are? When they installed it here, the fiber runs overhead from a demarc point a couple poles down the road to the house. Nothing buried. I'd want it in a conduit if it was underground.

 

[paulsharvey]

I’d say they want a utility locate in all 4 directions 50 feet. I’m not sure what toc means? When I was doing construction staking it meant top of curb.

T.O.C, could refer to top of a vertical curve (hill), but yes, white is for requesting locates. Survey would be pink.

Edit: I see yall already solved that one.

In the future, in most of the US;
color codes are;
White- white lining for locate request
Pink-survey
Orange-telecom
Red-power
Green-sanitary (gravity or force main) or effluent
Yellow-gas (also other fuels)
Blue-water
Purple-reclaimed or sometimes raw water

On industrial or military sites; they might have other codes for compressed air, steam, oily waste, salt water, ect

 

[ponytug]

You were lucky, I don't miss copper at all. Then again, you may be in an area where the infrastucture was newer, lots of the lines here date back to the 70s or before. When cable finally came here about 12 years ago the trunk lines were all fiber.
All in all, I've had very few issues with fiber internet, either at home or at worksites.

Are all the utilities (electric, phone, etc.) buried where you are? When they installed it here, the fiber runs overhead from a demarc point a couple poles down the road to the house. Nothing buried. I'd want it in a conduit if it was underground.

You are lucky to have '70s era lines. Ours date from WWII...

Not that we have fiber, but we were so glad to be done with the lousy infrastructure. Linesmen told us multiple times that the old wire splice/transfer boxes would get filled with acorns and short out in fog and rain.

I rather think that we will have to move to get fiber.

All the best, Peter

 

[Torvy]

They wasted a bunch of money running Spectrum down our road. Made a mess and zero people wanted it. Everyone uses Starlink because it goes out less than the buried lines.

 

[paulsharvey]

You were lucky, I don't miss copper at all. Then again, you may be in an area where the infrastucture was newer, lots of the lines here date back to the 70s or before. When cable finally came here about 12 years ago the trunk lines were all fiber.
All in all, I've had very few issues with fiber internet, either at home or at worksites.

Are all the utilities (electric, phone, etc.) buried where you are? When they installed it here, the fiber runs overhead from a demarc point a couple poles down the road to the house. Nothing buried. I'd want it in a conduit if it was underground.

Buried is more expensive in the Short term, but telecoms pay a joint use rental fee on the power company's poles; in the neighborhood of $7/month/pole. Doesn't seem bad, until you look at rural areas where there might be 5+ poles per customer. And the cost for the joint user is greater than the utility bill, before covering installation, cost of service, repairs, life span replacement, ect

Rural customers are generally a not profit making group for all utilities, gas, power, telecoms, ect

Of coarse this may vary company to company, and region to region. I have "heard" in the past, in Penn. every 3rd pole was technically owned by the phone provider. Dont know if that was Ever true, and surely isn't now as there are often 3-5 telecoms in a right of way, even if several aren't available for residential hookup.

 

[paulsharvey]

They wasted a bunch of money running Spectrum down our road. Made a mess and zero people wanted it. Everyone uses Starlink because it goes out less than the buried lines.

We have T-Mobile home cellular internet, and are more or less fine with it. Comcast, and possibly Cox are eyeing build outs, but I'm divided on if I would want them. There are major trunklines by Unitifiber, ATT, and similar less than 0.5 miles away, but they aren't interested in residential service.

 

[MossRoad]

Fiber is only put about 10 inches down, IIRC. I suspect gas has to be set way deeper than that.

Yeah, you'd think so, but it's flexible gas line and people have hit it around hear just digging a 1' hole. Sliced right through it with a shovel.

In our case, the guy had to run the fiber under the driveway. He had to dig a 8' trench perpendicular to the drive and snake something under to the other side. The other side is where the gas line is. I've seen it before when the gas company moved our meter from inside to outside. It's only about a foot down.

 

[MossRoad]

AAAaaaaaannnnndddddd..... the fiber is down again. Twice in the past two weeks.

 

[paulsharvey]

Yeah, you'd think so, but it's flexible gas line and people have hit it around hear just digging a 1' hole. Sliced right through it with a shovel.

In our case, the guy had to run the fiber under the driveway. He had to dig a 8' trench perpendicular to the drive and snake something under to the other side. The other side is where the gas line is. I've seen it before when the gas company moved our meter from inside to outside. It's only about a foot down.

With what we do, everything is required to be 30" under "green" areas, and 36"+ under roadways. Doesn't mean some things aren't shallower, either do to shady work, or terrian changes over the years.

 

[Oaktree]

They wasted a bunch of money running Spectrum down our road. Made a mess and zero people wanted it. Everyone uses Starlink because it goes out less than the buried lines.

Just the opposite here. When Spectrum (Time-Warner at the time) came thru here in the early teens, probably 80% of the residents on my road signed up. I dropped them earlier this year, not due to any service problems but because Consolidated (regional phone company) offered more speed for less money.
I don't know anyone who uses Starlink, even though they have an uplink point maybe 5 miles from here as the crow flies. Given the price, it's kind of an ISP of last resort.

Gotta say, never thought I'd see the day when I'd have multiple fiber ISPs to choose from. When we moved here in the mid 00s, dial-up or Hughesnet/Wildblue were the only options. Not even any cell service here at the time (well, it's still kinda iffy but usually works).

 

[kenmbz]

Our neighbors verizon fiber and our Comcast copper are all buried alongside driveway.
The were both close to the surface and while repaving got uncovered in many places.
Luckily neither got dug through.
I always thought these were below frost at 18", but since low voltage it was allowed to be less, but I bet these were only 8-9" under or less.

They came by and marked and were off , sometimes by a foot or two, which is a lot when using heavy machinery to level the sides for dumping asphalt!

 

[MossRoad]

I had a friend that was going to put up a 6' privacy fence in his back yard. He called before he dug. They came out and marked his lot and the lot to each side of him. First hole he cut his neighbor's phone line. The marking was off by several feet. The phone company came out and started working on it, so he decided to switch to the other side of the yard.... yep! A couple holes into it and he cut the other neighbor's phone line.

 

[Fixastuff]

Russian invasion code.... at least that's the rumor.

Not invading they were given the mineral rights. lol.

 

[dodge man]

The truth is the OP’s paint markings are directions for the making of crop circles.

 

[part-time-Farmer-NC]

I'd throw out there it stands for "Tough Ole Coot" lives here.... Someone respects your stances.