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Long depicted as slovenly cranks who dodged growling dogs and tracked mud on the living room carpet, cable guys (and gals) these days often have backgrounds in engineering and computer science. That kind of training is now required — along with a new dress code for some, calling for button-down dress shirts and slacks — as cable companies and their telephone rivals try to lure customers and increase revenue with a suite of products like cloud-based cable boxes and iPad apps that let subscribers set recording times remotely.
All that means added pressure for installers and new requirements for a job that traditionally appealed to high-school graduates looking for reliable blue-collar work.
“Back in my day, you called the phone company, we hooked it up, gave you a phone book and left,” said Paul Holloway, an area manager based in Denton, Tex., and a 30-year employee of Verizon, which offers phone, Internet, television and home monitoring services through its FiOS fiber optic network. “These days people are connecting iPhones, Xboxes and 17 other devices in the home.”
Robert Kolb, a 33-year-old installation and service supervisor for Comcast’s Xfinity television, phone and Internet service, has a one-year certification in network engineering. He wore pressed slacks and a sporty fleece jacket on an Internet upgrade job in the Philadelphia suburbs recently, where he worked on a company-issued MacBook laptop and had a waterproof hand-held computer that could withstand a five-foot drop.
He was checking the family’s existing Internet service, which had been spotty, strained by the home’s six computers and multiple iPhones.
“My genius husband had the router in the basement,” joked the homeowner, Kathleen Hassinger, a 39-year-old mother of three daughters. Mr. Kolb helped Mrs. Hassinger set up her digital cable box while his colleague, Byron Smith, installed a “wireless gateway,” transforming an unused stairwell into a control room for the modem and router that can handle at least 24 devices at 22 megabits per second.
Mr. Kolb sighed slightly as the job was almost complete. “What I learned yesterday could be outdated tomgorrow,” he said.
To make sure he stays up to date, Comcast requires him and other installers to take classes at an in-house training facility known as Comcast University.
The surge in high-tech offerings comes at a critical time for cable companies competing in an increasingly Internet-based marketplace. Today, more than 90 percent of the 115.9 million homes with televisions in the United States subscribe to basic cable, either from a cable operator or a satellite or phone company, according to Nielsen.
The nearly saturated marketplace means growth for cable companies must come from all the extras like high-speed Internet service, home security, digital recording devices and other high-tech upgrades. In 2011 Comcast introduced 16 products, more than the previous two years combined. Time Warner Cable, which used to offer one or two models of cable boxes, now has 20 models.
“We think the consumer wants a state-of-the-art experience,” Brian L. Roberts, Comcast’s chairman and chief executive said, as he showed off the company’s forthcoming partly cloud-based cable box with the internal code name of Xcalibur. Remote control in hand he added: “We have to factor in Androids, iPhones, tablets and any other device in your life.”
All this trickles down to the cable technician. “Even though we get training, we have to learn as we go,” said Wing Lee, a 32-year-old foreman at Time Warner Cable. He has a degree from New York University’s Polytechnic Institute and has reached the company’s highest ranking for technology certification.
The adjustment to new technology doesn’t come as naturally for other longtime employees. “A lot of the old-timers have a hard time keeping up,” Mr. Lee said as he drove to a job at a housing project in Brooklyn.
For years, as he plugged in the family lifeline known as the cable box, the installer held a farcical place in popular culture. In the 1996 comedy “The Cable Guy,” Jim Carrey poked fun at the job as a manipulative installer. The cable guy on “The Simpsons” gives Homer illegal service, then breaks into the family home to sell them home security.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 31, 2011
An article on Friday about the enhanced stature of cable installers misstated the speed of the Internet service that was set up in the home of a Comcast customer. It is 22 megabits per second, not megabytes.
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