I once had a Time Warner tech blame the moisture content of the air for impacting the copper cabling to explain outages at our apartment. This both makes more sense and, I suppose, is more interesting.
My parents’ house was connected to old copper phone lines from ca. 1940, and by the 1980s rain intrusion from long or heavy storms would cause massive static on the line (made worse when squirrels ran on the line). This was disastrous when I got my first modem ca 1986. Just unusable until it dried out.
Interesting! This was a relatively new apartment building in Hollywood with similarly aged cable — maybe he was right and I'm altogether wrong. They ran the cable up through vertically adjacent units as well which left you at some degree of mercy of your downstairs neighbors.
