Sliced cables lead to lawsuit
Anthony Luna was supporting his family with his small cable television and internet utility company, providing service to 229 customers in Weston Lakes in Fort Bend County and Corrigan, a small town in Polk County. When customers needed to talk to Telecom Cable about outages or billing, they called Luna’s personal cellphone number.
But the business that took a decade to build was destroyed in a matter of six weeks when underground cables that delivered service to homes in Weston Lakes were cut. Luna, in a lawsuit recently filed in state district court in Harris County, alleged that Comcast and its contractors, which were laying cables to bring Comcast services to the prosperous gated community, damaged Telecom’s lines to put him out of business.
Michael Bybee, director of external affairs at Comcast in Houston, said Comcast disputes Telecom’s claim and will vigorously defend itself. The two contractors, Aspen Utility Co. and A&A Cable Contractors, did not return calls for comment.
Luna said in the lawsuit that he couldn’t fix the cables fast enough before another was sliced, knocking out service to his customers. He tried to reach Comcast to get them to stop cutting his cables, but all he had was the customer service phone number, which relegated him to navigating menu options, waiting on hold and leaving messages. While he was trying to get through, the lawsuit said, three more cable lines were cut.
“It was fast and furious,” Luna said in an interview. “They could bully their way through the neighborhood and put us out of business.”
Luna started his company in 2007 in Cypress. By 2013, it had attracted the attention of Comcast, which made an offer to buy Luna
out for about $30,000, Luna said in an interview. Luna rejected the bid, recalling how insulted he felt that Comcast’s offer was even less than Telecom’s monthly revenues.
“Little did Telecom know that Comcast would adopt another method of taking control of its business,” the lawsuit said.
The trouble began in 2015 when Comcast entered Weston Lakes, according to court records. The two companies would be sharing the same utility easements, so Luna painted his cables orange and marked them with flags for easy identification.
Soon after, Luna’s customers alerted him about service outages. He found a mainline cable had been cut. The contractor directed Luna to call Comcast.
“I did as best as I could to keep the cables operational, but after the second or third day and nobody was calling me back,” Luna said in an interview.
Luna couldn’t reinstall the cables fast enough and, within six weeks, every Telecom cable in Weston Lakes had been destroyed, according to the lawsuit. None was fixed by Comcast or its contractors.
“One would like to believe that the destruction was accidental, but the comprehensiveness of it — coupled with Comcast’s prior interest in Telecom — renders such a conclusion doubtful,” Telecom Cable alleged in the lawsuit.
By Aug. 1, 2015, Telecom had no more customers in Weston Lakes. Comcast now provides services to the community, according to the lawsuit.
With his company out of business, Luna had to find another job and ended up uprooting his family to take a technical operations position with a communications provider in New York. Telecom is no longer in business — it also shut its doors in Corrigan — and Luna isn’t making nearly as much as he used to earn. He is still repaying the loans he took out to expand Telecom back in its prime.
The lawsuit charges Comcast and its partners with negligence, interfering with customer service contracts and conspiring to damage Telecom’s business. Telecom is seeking $1.2 million to compensate the company for lost customers, $625,0000 for cable system equipment and other damages, according to the lawsuit.