Wave Broadband → Bad uptime during power outages

Wave Broadband really needs to upgrade their old Power Guard UPS's to the newer Alpha units that they already have in other areas in my town. When my power went out a few days ago, my phone service lasted 20 minutes before going out completely. Note: I am on a UPS of my own and also have an Arris TM822G with "8 Hour" battery backup. Then, after the power went back on 1 hour later, I was without service for another 8 hours. I don't have a cell phone or a POTS line, so without Cable Phone, I have no way to call Puget Sound Energy for outage updates or 911 in case of an emergency.

It happened again, except this time my phone service lasted less than 5 minutes after the power outage, then my modem lost sync. Aren't there FCC regulations requiring that phone service is reliable during power outages, even for cable companies?

First complain to wave at least twice, after that file a complaint with the federal trade commission which will forward you to the FCC complaint center and see what happens, give them about 30 days, and my bet is it goes like this..

Wave HQ gets federally drafted form stating the issue and that they have 60 days to remedy the problem or they will mediate a trial.

Cubicle Jones, the high paid office sup, goes to the lawyer and says whats this.

The lawyer says, I'll cost you more to take it to court, my suggestion is to remedy it.

Cubicle Jones calls regional manager and chews him one.
Regional manager calls area manager and chews him one X2
Area manager calls office manager and chews him one 3
Area manager sends specific tech out to figure out wtf is going on and what it will take and cost to make it [and more importantly his supervisors] go away and reports back to office manager. Office manager takes it up with appropriate division and has them contact you and let you know what the plan is and how long it will take.

At least that's always been my experience with them filed for sprint who's cell service did not work where i lived and they wanted an ETF to cancel me, they cancelled, no etf, and no real problem, once they got that letter.

Credit card company got my SS# wrong but still sent a card, would not activate the card, cancel my account nor stop sending me an insane charge that I never agreed to pay [yes you capitol one] I told the guy I was going to report them if they did not get this fixed had called maybe 3 times, got another bill, put in complaint, got call maybe 3 weeks later, they CANCELLED my account which they previously told me they could not do, they removed the charges, and I never heard from them again except in the usual junk mail outs.

I say give them their chance, then sick the dogs on them.

Oh and the website to do this is »www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/

If you can type its pretty simple from there, if not, you can call them at

Phone: Call our toll-free helpline: 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357);
TTY: 1-866-653-4261

Good idea, they probably wouldn't bother installing a new UPS on a pole without some kind of FTC complaint. I absolutely need phone service during a power outage, but it won't even last 5 minutes with their old technology.

I should contact to ask to fix their UPS system them before filing a complaint, though.

*I should contact them to ask to fix their UPS system them before filing a complaint, though.

One of the requirements is that you tried to take it up with the company, they don't want to have costs on the gov't for stuff you could have done yourself over the phone. That's why I said at least twice after that, wave had their chance to do it, and now you need help. Its not fair to just start off with a federal draft form and not give them a chance, if they don't know there s a problem they cannot fix it, and in any network that large they rely on the end customer telling them about the issues.

Good luck. I also don't know what the mandatory back up time is, they may be complaint. I work for CC in kitsap and ours lasts longer than 2 hours, but if that's all the requirement is, then get dialing fast I guess.

PS it is not called a UPS system, but a power supply. They also should have a port they can deploy a generator to after the batteries get weak assuming its a local outage and not after like a wind storm when 50% of the plant is offline, at that point its wait for PoCo to get it back up.

Unfortunately, with the rampant meth problem in this county, they just get stolen so....

"Unfortunately, with the rampant meth problem in this county, they just get stolen so...." True, true...

"PS it is not called a UPS system, but a power supply. "
UPS stands for Uninterruptible Power Supply, FYI.

Maybe the reason it was out was from a fiber cable being cut, not the UPS failing. Anyways, I'll wait a while before filing a complaint.

The backup on their systems looks fine now, as long as I'm on my generator. My Arris TM822G acts up about 5 minutes after the power goes out (even when it's not hooked up to my amplifier), so the phone dies right after that. I'm thinking that either the firmware, battery, or the modem itself might be defective. When driving by their store/headend, I saw a pile of those old Power Guard UPSes in the back. Maybe they're rolling out the new power supplies now, or they could even be replacing the internals of the old backup systems with newer internals, and just using the old ones as an enclosure.