Minimum Installation Depth for Cable TV/Fiber?

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supertopo

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Recently we've been getting "dinged" for cable hits where our company has hit cable TV buried under sod or less than 6" deep. Are Cable TV/Phone companies governed by any regulatory agency specifying minimum depth. I work for an electric coop and we've always maintained the practice of not billing, if our cable wasn't to depth. I've always assumed they were to be at a min. of 18" of depth, but didn't know if this was a "rule of thumb" or specifically stated by a regulatory agency or group. If anyone could guide me to the right agency or webpage with this info. I'd appreciate it. BTW I'm located in South Dakota if that's of any relevance.

Thank-you.
 
Locates are ALWAYS called in. The problem being instances where there's frost or there literally just below the sod. I know that if we were to "fight it" the response will be "you should have been hand digging". Sometimes we have hit them hand digging, as there so ridiculously shallow. If there going to bill, it would be nice to have a governing body whereupon I could say "fine, we should have been hand digging but we will be reporting you to ????FCC??? for not complying with minimum installation depths.
 
luckylerado said:
Can you make T830.47 stick? I would bet the utility has its own spec but good luck holding them to it. AHJ has very little teeth with cable companies in my area.
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Article 830 does not apply to standard TV cable. Standard cable is covered by Article 820.
 
luckylerado said:
Agreed, but does that remain true when internet services are provided?
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As far as I know, even where you get your internet through the TV cable, the modem is not powered by the incoming cable. Article 830 installations have the power on the same cable as the signal. That is the reason there is a burial depth specified for Article 830. As far as I know the NEC does not have burial depths for Article 800 and 820 installations.
 
don_resqcapt19 said:
As far as I know, even where you get your internet through the TV cable, the modem is not powered by the incoming cable. Article 830 installations have the power on the same cable as the signal. That is the reason there is a burial depth specified for Article 830. As far as I know the NEC does not have burial depths for Article 800 and 820 installations.
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Depends if you're hitting trunk cable or the "drops" to each house. The trunk cable usually has 60-90VDC up to 15A to power the various amplifiers along the way. Most drops are unpowered, however there are a few places where they've tried powering the customer's equipment from the trunk line (usually for phone service; requires special power-passing taps)
 
Rampage_Rick said:
Depends if you're hitting trunk cable or the "drops" to each house. The trunk cable usually has 60-90VDC up to 15A to power the various amplifiers along the way. Most drops are unpowered, however there are a few places where they've tried powering the customer's equipment from the trunk line (usually for phone service; requires special power-passing taps)
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That would probably make it an Article 830 installation. That is not done around here. The equipment at the customer interface needs 120 volt power from the customer. The communications company provides a small UPS as part of their installation.

That is one of the issues with the alternative phone services...the loss of service when you lose power. The traditional phone service is powered from the central office and they normally have long term power back up (assuming you have a direct connection to the central office). In the event of power failure you still have a dial tone as long as the wire between you and the central office is intact. The small UPS provided by the cable company, or by the phone company where you have fiber to the home is not near as reliable as the old POTS phones.
 
don_resqcapt19 said:
That is one of the issues with the alternative phone services...the loss of service when you lose power. The traditional phone service is powered from the central office and they normally have long term power back up (assuming you have a direct connection to the central office). In the event of power failure you still have a dial tone as long as the wire between you and the central office is intact. The small UPS provided by the cable company, or by the phone company where you have fiber to the home is not near as reliable as the old POTS phones.
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Indeed. Even if you have reliable emergency power you're also at the mercy of any active equipment along the line.

As you said, only one point of failure for traditional phone lines: The giant battery banks at the central office. It gets a bit more complicated with RLU/concentrators but they usually have similar coverage (around here they'll run for about 24 hours then they'll send out guys with generators, about a dozen sites)

Cable TV & Phone can have two or more points of failure: The headend, the fiber>coax node, and one or more amplifiers along the way. Generally you're at the mercy of the batteries in the pole-mounted power supplies which run everything outside the headend. Typical runtime here is about 4 hours on battery. Once they're gone you're SOL. Way too many units for them to run around with generators.

Our Telco is transitioning to GPON fiber. It's a bit better since there are no active components between you and the central office. Same big batteries at the CO, and if you've got backup power you're laughing, regardless of the puny battery that comes with the ONT
 
At my previous residence the best internet connection available was a multi-node point to point network using WiFi frequencies.
When a heavy snowstorm took out grid power for six days the internet connection went out when the service trucks were unable to reach the repeater sites to replace batteries once per day.
The cell sites were not a lot better off, but did have some generators and some were in cities where the power was restored quicker.
But the antique modem on POTS telephone line worked just fine. (Well, no movie downloads, but email worked.)
 
The utility providers are not bound to the NEC so it doesn't matter if NEC has a burial depth or not. There could be some other regulation they need to follow though, check with your state public utilities commission - or other equivalent.
 
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