Just a marker, cable was restored Sunday (out for a week), and phone/DSL was restored this morning (out for ~10 days). The power company owns the poles and had first strike, and the cable and phone guys both had to wait for the power lines to be hung before they could get on the poles.
The power wires are just unshielded individual wires, and the power guys used some kind of self-clamping tube thing to splice the breaks. The phone and cable lines use a heavy galvanized support wire that holds tension between the poles, with the service lines strapped to the support wire. At each house there were lines going from the pole to the house, and any breaks on those were repaired separately from the lines on the poles. The phone guys also had punchdown boxes at every pole, and when the trees broke the support wires then the punchdown boxes became the weak link and blew apart, so every wire pair had to be reconnected at every pole where the line had been broken.
The power coop was well prepared and brought in outside crews from Tenn and put them in a hotel before the storm even got here. The local cable provider was also well prepared and also brought in support crews, and put them in a rented house (the crew boss said they also had trees on their rental, no power or cable). Verizon was not prepared at all. The wireline group was on strike a couple of weeks ago and it was obvious that it had impacted planning and resource allocation. The crews were not the correct ratios, were not coordinated with each other, and did not have sufficient materials.
Interesting storm, and glad it's over. We got off lucky compared to the people further north who lost everything in the floods
