Anonymity can be a blessing, especially for a communications utility with a casual approach to fixing its equipment. Our streets are laden with the ties that bind us, particularly communications infrastructure — pedestal boxes for local telecom service, large cabinets filled with heavy-duty connections and wires running from pole to pole. In exchange for selling us services we want, telecom providers are free to put their equipment in the handiest places, including boulevards, sidewalks and even under our roads, which they are allowed to dig up whenever it suits them. Despite these privileges, some utilities have shown no interest in being good neighbours; how else to explain the large number of pedestal boxes that are missing their covers, with wires spilling out of them? And in many cases, the boxes have nothing on them to identify the utility responsible, which we’ve come to believe is no accident, when it would be so easy to stamp the utility’s name on them.

Source: thestar August 09, 2017 20:03 UTC