There’s a tendency in this industry to talk about broadband through a sanitized lens -charts, ARPU, acronyms. But if you’ve spent any time in the field, you know that running an ISP is far messier than that.
In Episode 3 of Bandwidth, we swapped stories from our time in the trenches. Real ones. The kind that don’t show up in glossy case studies or vendor decks. A few of them were funny. Some were disturbing. But all of them paint an honest picture of what it means to build and operate a network in the real world.
Let’s start with a favorite from my co-host, Larry: a customer called to cancel his service and told him point blank, “You have until the end of the day to get this thing off my roof or I’m shooting it.”
Larry didn’t get there in time. The customer shot the radio, brought it into the office, and dropped it on the counter like it was a library book. Still had the slug inside. On one hand: irrational. On the other: efficient.
Another time, an installer realized halfway through the job that they were at the wrong house. Not only did the customer not complain—they were thrilled. They’d been on the waitlist for months and thought they’d won the lottery. The right customer still got service. Just took a bit more juggling.
This isn’t unusual. You’re crawling under houses, dodging wasps on ladders, tiptoeing through hoarder homes, or gagging in what you hope is a mudroom but turns out to be a dedicated indoor pet latrine.
And then there’s the stuff that makes you pause. One tech walked into a strip club for a call and decided to stay—multiple times. Another showed up to a business that doubled as a chop shop. Shotgun by the door, Cartoon Network on the TV, rat droppings in the ceiling.
And of course, the time someone accidentally formatted a customer’s hard drive because “it wasn’t working, so I figured I’d start fresh.” These aren’t hypotheticals. They happen more often than we admit.
It’s easy to underestimate what field teams deal with daily. They’re not just plugging things in. They’re walking into unknowns, managing customer emotions, navigating unsafe situations, and trying to do it all while representing your brand.
My co-host Paul had a tech in Missouri open a garage to find a live meth lab. He calmly walked back to the truck, called the police, and kept it moving. That’s not in the job description—but it is the job.
One of the weirder things about field work is the contrast. In a single day, you can go from a dirt-floor shack to a luxury home with more rooms than occupants. One customer had a hidden staircase behind the fireplace that led to a private observatory. It was stunning—and completely abandoned. Three years’ worth of dead bugs collected in a room they forgot they built.
The next stop? A DIY mess with exposed Ethernet wires twisted together using tiny wire nuts. Neat execution, completely wrong solution.
Field stories are more than war stories. They’re a reminder that broadband work happens in real communities, with real people, in conditions that no amount of automation or planning can completely predict. Our networks might run on fiber and RF, but they operate in the real world. And that world doesn’t always come with clean drywall and labeled ports.
This is why I’m a firm believer in product decisions that reflect operator reality—not idealized flows. I’ve stood in the crawl spaces, spent late nights on roofs, and walked into the “please don’t mind the smell” zones.
If you’re leading a team, building systems, or just trying to keep your techs sane, I’d encourage you to listen to the episode. You’ll laugh. You might cringe. But you’ll definitely relate.
You can listen to the full episode now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. And if you’ve got your own “you’re not gonna believe this” moment from the field, hit us up. We might tel your tale on a future episode.
Until next time—stay safe, stay scrappy, and maybe don’t format the customer’s hard drive unless they ask.