Internet service entrance planning for Fios, Optimum and Spectrum

Who controls what at the demarcation point

Federal rules divide responsibility (opens an external site) at a demarcation point. The provider owns and maintains everything up to that point; wiring beyond it belongs to the customer (opens an external site) or building owner.

Preparing the pathway before the installer arrives

• Choose the network closet first, then install a 1 to 1.25 inch conduit with a pull string from the exterior entry point to the closet, and ask the provider where its drop will land before the walls close.
• For underground service, a sealed conduit from the building toward the property line lets the provider pull fiber later. Work in the sidewalk or street is performed by the provider or a contractor holding the required city permits.
• Provide an outlet at the equipment location, installed by our licensed electrical partner, and a battery backup unit for the ONT or modem and router.
• Leave a service loop of fiber. Fiber has a minimum bend radius, so it is never stapled tight or buried in a wall without conduit.
• Coaxial shields and copper telephone cable must be bonded to the building grounding electrode system at the entrance with a short bonding conductor (NEC 800.100 for communications and coaxial cables, and 770.100 for fiber with metal strength members or armor), which is why providers prefer an entry near the electric service. All-dielectric fiber without metal members does not require this bonding.
• Consolidate to one entry. Remove old telephone and coaxial entries and dead cable, as NYC section 800.25 requires for accessible abandoned cable, seal the openings against water and pests, and pre-run a second conduit if a second provider may be added for redundancy.

Installation crews work quickly and take the most direct route: the nearest wall, coaxial cable stapled across the facade, or an ONT mounted behind the boiler. Having the conduit, outlet and mounting location ready before the appointment is the surest way to get a neat installation in a conditioned space near the network closet.

Once service is inside, the router can move anywhere on a Cat6 run. Unused splitters and amplifiers on old coaxial lines come out, because each one is a point of failure. In co-ops and condominiums the service entry and risers belong to the building, so the board's approval and building rules come first.

Battery backup

Internet service stops when the power goes out unless the equipment has backup. Verizon's PowerReserve accessory (opens an external site) holds 12 D-cell batteries and powers Fios home phone service for up to 24 hours, but it does not power Fios Internet, Fios TV, security systems or cordless phones. Ask your provider which backup options it offers for your equipment.

For internet that stays up in an outage, put the ONT or modem, router, PoE switch and camera recorder on one UPS sized for the combined load. A UPS on the router without the ONT, or the reverse, leaves the home offline. For longer outages, the same equipment can be fed from a home battery or a Tesla Powershare backup system.

Bringing the line in high

Owners often ask for the service to come in through the attic or at the roof line so that a burglar cannot cut it at a ground-level box. There is some basis for this. Burglars cutting telephone and alarm lines is documented, and an exposed box at ground level is easy to reach. Many aerial drops in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Long Island already attach high on the house; the exposed section is usually the vertical run down the facade to a low box, and bringing the cable inside at the attachment height removes it.

The protection is limited. The line can still be cut at the pole, along the aerial span or at a curb box, all outside the owner's control, and burglars increasingly use Wi-Fi and cellular jammers (opens an external site) instead of cutting cable, although current alarm panels offer RF-jamming detection and a supervised cellular path reports a jam as a trouble event. The provider decides how its drop is attached; an owner can request an attic entry and provide a pathway but cannot require it. Roof penetrations raise waterproofing and roof warranty concerns, attic routes must maintain fire separation, homes with underground service enter at the foundation, and in multifamily buildings the service lands in the basement telecom room, which is better protected with a lock, a door contact and a camera. A high entrance is a reasonable extra when you are renovating anyway and the provider agrees. A cellular backup path, local recording and offline alerts do the real work.

Protection that works when a line is cut

• Dual-path alarm communication: the alarm panel reports over both cellular (LTE or LTE-M) and the internet, so a cut cable becomes an alarm event rather than a blind spot. Cellular backup detects the cut; it does not prevent it. Ask the monitoring company for a short supervision interval and a communication-failure alert to your phone.
• Local recording: cameras record to a network video recorder kept indoors, hidden or locked, and on battery backup. Cloud-only cameras stop recording when the line is cut.
• Hard-wired PoE cameras, which wireless jammers cannot disable. Police in New Jersey (opens an external site) and Los Angeles have recommended hard-wiring after jammer burglaries. Operating or selling a jammer is illegal under federal law, but it still occurs.
• A local siren and motion lighting that do not depend on the internet.
• Offline and tamper alerts: camera and alarm apps that report a device offline, and a router with 5G or LTE failover so notifications continue. A camera covering the service entrance and the electric meter records any tampering.
• Physical measures within your control: your own wiring in conduit from the demarcation point inward, a lockable or tamper-resistant enclosure for your equipment, and battery backup, since cutting power is the other common tactic. The provider's box is not locked or modified without the provider's approval.

Older alarm communicators built for 2G or 3G networks no longer work, since those networks have been shut down in the United States, so confirm that the communicator uses LTE or LTE-M. Intrusion alarm installation and monitoring in New York State are services of a licensed alarm company under General Business Law Article 6-D, and we coordinate the cabling, power and network side with that company.

Before a provider installation or during a renovation, we lay out the entrance pathway, network closet, battery backup and a camera and alarm arrangement that keeps reporting when a line is cut. We work on the customer side of the demarcation point; changes to the provider's own drop and equipment are requested from the provider.