Quick, when I say “cable service in the District,” what springs to mind? Odds are, you’re thinking Comcast’s overall ineptitude and Verizon’s never-ending quest to get FiOS into D.C.’s living rooms. But while there’s little doubt that said topics represent the lion’s share of the headlines, Washingtonians may tend to forget that region’s less monopolistic cable operators have just as many foibles. According to postings on the Cleveland Park listserv, there are a group of people who certainly didn’t miss an issue with one of those smaller operators, RCN: some analog subscribers were experiencing a digital blizzard of white snow on their televisions, well before the notorious February 17 drop dead date.

One poster explains:

RCN has gone all digital. They announced it in a letter a while back that looked like their typical advertising, so you probably threw it away. I also neglected it and so have no TV service. I imagine their customer service lines will be jammed for days.

Hold on. Isn’t the big, scary analog-to-digital conversion not scheduled for another few weeks? To boot, isn’t there a strong consensus that most of America remains unprepared for the switch, so much so that a delay of the conversion date is currently being considered in Congress?

photo by alex.DC.