Recently had a last mile experience when Comcast stopped providing service to my building because they couldn't access their own utility pole!
Sometime in the dim past, copper TV cable service was installed in the back of my building; Comcast now uses the wires for TV and internet. My cable stretches across three fenced-in backyards to a pole located on property facing an adjacent street. Here's a diagram:
Last week a branch cracked off the Giant Dead Tree (about five stories high) behind Bldg B-2, breaking the cable that extends from the backyard of Bldg B-1 to my building, Bldg A-2. In order to repair the cable, the Comcast technician would have to get the permission of owners or tenants of Bldg B-1 to let him into their backyard so he could climb the pole there. He couldn't get access, so he says, so he gave up and went on to his next job.
Comcast's customer service said the only way I could get the connection restored was to try to convince the residents of Bldg B-1 to give them access to Comcast's pole -- to act as the company's real estate agent, in other words. As if! Comcast was behaving as if it still had a monopoly but FIOS recently came to our neighborhood (via a competitor provider) so I have an alternative to knocking on doors on their behalf.