Boxed in by Comcast

"I came home to find Comcast had put a green utility box smack-dab in the middle of my lawn," said Cheryl Davison, who lives in northwest Santa Rosa. "You couldn't miss it. My stomach just turned."

The plastic boxes, about the size of air conditioners, are appearing across Santa Rosa as Comcast upgrades its cable network.

The upgrade has caused sporadic service outages across the city, irking customers and leaving some without Internet or cable for more than a week.

Davison, an assistant lab director at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Santa Rosa, spent three weeks trying to get the box removed. It was far more obtrusive than the old Comcast equipment, which had been buried in her yard and covered with a plastic lid that was flush with her grass.

After three weeks of jumping through hoops, she got Comcast to put the new equipment underground too -- but it wasn't easy.

Davison and others wonder why Comcast doesn't initially put the equipment underground, or work harder to make the boxes less of an eyesore.

Comcast's rival, AT&T, has also drawn criticism for placing even larger boxes on residential properties in Santa Rosa -- one woman had a retaining wall cut into her front yard to accommodate AT&T's equipment.

The telephone company is upgrading its network to provide TV service and faster Internet service, while the cable company is overhauling its network to provide phone service, more channels and quicker Internet.

In both cases, company executives say the equipment runs hotter -- requiring more ventilation -- and it can't be buried underground.

"You don't want this sensitive network equipment to overheat," said Andrew Johnson, vice president of communications for Comcast.

But residents complain Comcast isn't doing enough to mitigate the impact -- both visually and potentially to a property's value.

"No one is going to be happy to have the box in their yard, but Comcast could do a lot better with customer service and dealing with their customers," said Santa Rosa resident Jim Chilton.

Chilton returned home April 8 to discover a Comcast box had been placed so close to his driveway he couldn't open his car door to help his 4-year-old son out.

"It looked awful," Chilton said. "The grass around the box was disturbed and never replaced."

After trying Comcast's toll-free number and not getting any help, Chilton wrote a letter to the cable provider's legal department. He got a call back from a Comcast representative who pledged to work with him to relocate it, he said.

"Just trying to get a hold of someone to talk to is a total pain," he said. "They would not have done squat if I hadn't written their legal department."

Davison said she also got nowhere with customer service at Comcast's toll-free number.

So she decided to call the contractor who installed the box -- his number was listed on a door hanger left by Comcast after the construction. The contractor provided her a number for Comcast's local network construction team, and she eventually talked to someone who helped.

Three weeks after she discovered the box on her lawn, Comcast put it back underground.

Johnson said the network was likely reconfigured in the neighborhood to appease Davison, with the hot-running equipment put somewhere else.

Comcast is about 75 percent finished with the network upgrade, Johnson said.

AT&T declined to comment on the progress of construction to its new network.

You can reach Staff Writer Nathan Halverson at 521-5494 or nathan.halverson@pressdemocrat.com.