Just judging by the fading label - absolutely.

Generally, I’ve always replaced splitters about every several years. (No more than 5.) They do go bad over time.

If that doesn’t work, I’d recommend considering replacing the coax.

Can you log onto the web interface of your cable modem and report the signal levels? We had issues for years where it would be fine and just go poof. After about a year of calling twice a week they sent a crew out and they cut every connector off of every wire and replaced them, looked, and were it is fine now. Um it was always fine til it was not. And they were no sooner gone when the signal went away yet again. Months later they sent another guy, on his own, to shut me up, and he looked and found the issue in about 30 seconds and I am not kidding. They had a heavy wire wrapped around the cable where it met our eave and the nail they had it tied to pulled out so the cable was bent at a sharp 90 degree angle and sometimes the ends pressed together and sometimes not. He ran a new wire from the pole to the house but he did not have a bucket truck so it was on the ground, he was going to come back in a week or so to fix it. Two weeks later I called and he was no longer with them. It took and I am not kidding two years to get the wire back up in the air. They came out and fixed it and like a month later Verizon ran Fios out here and we have not looked back. Oh, the old company began with Z and ended with O as is O star reviews for their service.

Looks pretty poor. If the 2nd cable from the splitter doesn’t go anywhere useful, you could just get rid of the splitter, and join the two ends with a straight-thru connector instead of that rusty old splitter. That and fixing the cable sound like good first steps to fixing your problem.

Yes, and regarding the appointment, it has been a busy week for ISPs and understaffed techOps, I am tech support not dispatch and a poor tech called my at 8:00pm still working on a cx house, (with no dispatch assistance bc they left at 6:00pm)

Try to reschedule the appointment, having that exposed may be being affected by humidity, change of temperature during the day, etc

Everyone is forgetting grounding and a mocca filter and a weather box. So not spec. Also just because you remove a splitter means you fix the issue. Sometimes putting a spliter in place actually helps. There is a sweet spot where the signal strength needs to be. Unless you have the appropriate meter you will not know what your measurements are.

Just make the cable company fix it. Cable must be sealed and dry to work properly.

Not “could”, it definitely is.

Replace the splitter. Splitters go bad. I just replace them to be safe if having any issues.

Broken shielded cable usually means RF ingress and water intrusion that destroys the high band frequencies which most MSO operators use for Downstream. So broken shielding effects both TX and RX.

Yes. Coax is very fickle. It’s really easy to cause interference or mess up the signal one way or another. Even the change in temperature over the seasons has a strong effect on signal strength.

Call the ISP to get it fixed. Or if you’re up for the challenge, buy a coax stripper, a coax crimper, and some outdoor rated type-F connectors and fix it yourself.

Yea, 100%. Easy fix with the right tools. Just call your ISP to come out and fix it for free.

That one head of coax needs to be replaced immediately. With the split in the shield, signal interference is highly likely with that. In fact, That whole junction should be replaced and updated with new equipment.

Yes, that is most likely why. Moisture does weird stuff depending on temperature. Also you may have to replace the whole cable because moisture really likes to wick into the braid and corrode. I have seen the outer braid corroded back several feet.

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Also if you dont have the tools to do a proper compression connector, wait for the tech. Screw on connectors might be even worse than what you have now.

As was said earlier, this is an easy fix if the correct tools and a replacement compression RG6 coaxial cable connector are available.

I see some other piece of hardware in the top left corner of the picture. Is that a grounding block?

If it were me, I’d request to have the splitter and the two cable runs replaced as they look fairly weathered. But the technician will be able to make a determination once onsite.

100% coax is super susceptible to cuts and exposure to weather. You’re probably degrading the whole node with that. even a little bit of loss of shield can compromise the low band return spectrum and the whole nodes upstream. this is why cable modem is the new DSL. it sucks for performance and reliability. Any one customer without even trying can cause an outage on coax. Lets unplug that TV with cable card and a center pin thats too long … boom antenna. coax not tightened down enough on a splitter, modem or set top box. If your not using a PPC SignalTight or SignalTight Clone it will ingress low band. At some point you almost have to look at a coax like its a water pipe. We had a video headend that had leaks like this … was so bad we either have to replace all cable or just put in filters. the filters worked better than expected and lowered the noise floor 5-8 db more than before the ingress problem even existed.

i have my hands in some coax hub and headend work but mostly hard troubleshooting like odd leaks/ingress problems that stuff like this picture cause.

there was a video by Brady Volp a well known expert in the docsis/coax space about how even cable staples will cause signal reflections. its a hard space to keep functional and the more stringent the requirements get the harder it is.