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Arris box on side of home

Recently moved into a 1960s era single-family home in the Chicago suburbs serviced by RCN/Astound broadband. Broadband comes in through a separate box that is several feet away. There is an Arris box (below) on the side of the home adjacent to the electrical meter that has one wire going into the house from the bottom, which looks like an ethernet cable. There is also what looks like a coax cable coming out of the bottom of the box which was cut.

The home was hard wired for ethernet by previous owners in late 1990s or early 2000s - this may be related to it but not sure.

We are considering upgrading the home from 100 amp to 200 amp electrical service and one of the cheaper options is installing an outdoor electrical panel--which would require removing this box if it's not being used.

If we do need to move the panel, do we contact the broadband carrier to do it? Do we have the electrician do it or do it ourselves? Not quite sure what to do with this one.

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  • Contact the owner of the box by email. Give them a time limit to remove or you will remove it, since it is abandon. Keep everything in writing.
    – crip659
    Commented Aug 11, 2023 at 20:43
  • It is already abandoned. I would remove it without a second thought, although I would not damage it in removing it and I would store it safely. First I would open it and examine the connections inside.
    – Jim Stewart
    Commented Aug 11, 2023 at 21:03
  • It doesn't look like you can remove it without opening it. Which means damaging it. So you either damage it or allow the owner to remove it.
    – Rohit Gupta
    Commented Aug 11, 2023 at 21:16
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    @RohitGupta these are designed to be opened with the right tool. Like the fios boxes I've had to open to do a power cycle because the alternative is pulling regular power and battery, and the battery not designed for easy removal. Especially when the alternative is to wait for a Verizon dispatch which is a waste of my (and my customer's) time and Verizon s money. What none of these companies want is casual know nothing poking around. They know they won't stop determined IT pros.
    – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact
    Commented Aug 11, 2023 at 21:27

2 Answers 2

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Grab a screwdriver and undo that screw front and center. 99.999999% sure you'll find the other end of the cut coax and, from the sounds of it, a CAT5/5e cable maybe plugged into an RJ45, but probably not.

Since it's connected to a cut low-voltage data cable and might be connected to another low-voltage data cable, there's no problem whatsoever with just unscrewing it from the wall.

I've got my old Comcast cable box tucked away in the garage somewhere just in case I need a fairly weathertight exterior box for something. I pulled it after I switched to fiber from another carrier (10x faster speeds for 1.1x the price).

I pulled the cable out of the box and left it dangling, then when they PoCo contractor came out to bury my power line, I asked if they would pull the coax too. Since they were up there working on it, they didn't mind pulling down one more cable. Now it's coiled neatly, taped together and strapped to the bottom of the power pole across the street. If Comcast ever wants it, they can come get it.

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    Front screw is for access to consumer section. Most likely a hex driver will get the inset screw below it which gets you full access.
    – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact
    Commented Aug 11, 2023 at 21:29
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    That was my point @manassehkatz-Moving2Codidact - open it up to see what's connected inside. Then remove it from the wall. I guess that should have been made more clear.
    – FreeMan
    Commented Aug 12, 2023 at 11:54
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First open the lower right panel labeled "Customer Access" by removing the screw and swiveling the door open.

Then open the lower left panel labeled "Service Access" by removing THAT screw. They have tried to make it "difficult" by placing the screw in an inset hole. Like, IDK, you won't think to look in the hole? Maybe they also used a different kind of screw head. It's obviously not meant to be "Secure", it's just meant to make it POSSIBLE for you to easily get to your half without ACCIDENTALLY opening their half and messing it up.

Anyway, once you open the left half, I think the top half (wait, that's three halves?) will pop open.

Then, with everything on display, if any doubt remains about whether this box is still in use or not, take a picture of all the gubbins and add it to your question.

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  • In the process, you may find a model number for this box which would let you look up what it was actually doing. Unfortunately Arris is a general communications manufacturer doing everything from set-tip boxes to VOIP, so the name alone is not enough. And it isn't unique enough for an image search to find anything useful; I tried.
    – keshlam
    Commented Aug 12, 2023 at 1:54

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