We saw our network go down on one of our grain elevators at 8:15am on Friday and we called the elevator and asked if anyone was working up there and they said a contractor for Verizon was there removing old cell equipment from the tower. I knew at that point they had cut or worse, removed equipment from the tower as we were down. Me and another tech arrived by 8:45 and climbed to find our cables snipped and half of our antennas already taken down. It was also raining which made everything worse. The climbers there said their boss said take everything down even though he was there last week taking pictures to survey the site. How they would mistake our small 2 ft. sectors with their 8 foot sectors is amazing to me but they said take it all down. There is Verizon, our WISP and a competitor WISP up there and our equipment in no way looks like cellular equipment.
I have not yet contacted the contractor headquarters yet as I wanted to reach out to the community and see if others have gone through the same experience and if they are able to bill the company for our emergency repair of the site. It tooks us 5 hours with two guys to get everything back online and another 5 hours today with one guy to tidy everything back up to original condition. We have a contract with the elevator and they knew we were up there and the contractor did not ask them about other equipment, they just showed up and said we're taking down their equipment. I'm going to put together a bill to send to the contractor and wonder your opinions on whether they will fight this or just give in and pay the bill because they didn't do their due diligence in researching who else was on the site? Thanks for your comments -- Darin Steffl Minnesota WiFi www.mnwifi.com 507-634-WiFi <http://www.facebook.com/minnesotawifi> Like us on Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/minnesotawifi>
