Either they cut the thick ass cable, or mice got in the box

Turns out its the former. The idiots ended up cutting the cable. My provider has to fix their screw up, and slap them with the bill for the damages.

depending on the level of damage they will either patch it or replace as needed (though they might try to get it run in a overhead fashion instead, if so check if it will affect your service!)

Well, for right now my provider patched it. Said they'd have to come back later to do a proper repair job on it.

The damage that was caused: https://i.imgur.com/CHJS5e8.jpeg

damn, thats a full break, I had a minor bit of damage (and then got away with working with the repair till Fiber fainlly came in)

Had another technician show up. They laid down markers, took some photos, and according to them the marks the contractors laid down were too far apart which may have led to them hitting that cable. And they should have felt it and reported it. Should have being the operative words. But since I had to call it in and my provider clearly wasn't aware of it until they got out here...

Someones in trouble

Oh yeah. Though wither they'll have to pay for the damages or not, I have no idea.

There will be a proper repair job performed, just not for a day or so; they have another town that currently has a higher priority than my own area.

and al ot of places are tryign to cut back on the old copper lines

Indeed. Though they are required by law to keep these lines maintained as best they can in the meantime.

Quite, my area still has buried phone lines, but with fiber (FINALLY) being installed it is now simply up to customers to switch service, so a ways to go yet

Though I dread some of the things that such a move willl bring. Landlines won't be true landlines any more for one.
* They'll need adapters to connect to that fiber network.
* The adapters need batteries and an external power supply.
* If there is an extended power outage lasting longer than 2 days, your old "landline" stops working entirely (but so does the battery backup for the network).
* A lot of people have mobile phones, but not not everyone.
* Signal strength in rural areas tend to suck right now. More towers are being built to fix that, but thats naturally slow going.

I have been using landline service for 34 years. Its the least affected by solar flares, sun spots, nasty electrical storms, and so on. Its reliable. Its not immune to some weather-caused outages like the two winter storms that started the year, but it has been like a rock otherwise; solid

The DSL is slow, but its also equally reliable for similar reasons. I may not like how slow it is, but its better than dialup and carrier pigeons. Plus I was grandfathered into DSL in the late 2000's for being a long-standing customer. :p

True enough, when they installed service they did have a small adapter that went to the phonebox on the outside of the house, otherwise I didn't have to change any internal lines.

They did include a battery backup unit to keep phones working in the case of an outage, though I also recall during a extended power outage them running around with generators for their equipment (naturally not every business will do so)

And this adapter is not compatible with DSL technology, so your days of using DSL are over once that adapter is put in place.

However I am also told that unless the casing or the internals are damaged, they won't touch the "access point" or upgrade it to an NID. The principal of "if it works, don't poke at it or fix it".

Ours still has the Bell Atlantic logo.

I watched the guy personally, he barely had to do anything to the external access point, so I should be fine.

Grandfather used to work for Bell back in the day, lineman.

My mother for me, switch board operator.

sweet