JIBGUY said:Arbitron does not pay the tech people to install it and maintain it. And there are contractual obligations if encoding equipment breaks down, as to how fast it must be fixed.
The encoders remain the property of Arbitron and are Arbitron's responsibility to fix. One client recently had what seemed to be a malfunctioning encoder, and Arbitron immediately sent a replacement. The actual problem turned out to be the local cable company's phone service, which was so bad that Arbitron was unable to verify the proper operation of either encoder (I solved the problem by putting the encoded signal on an Internet stream).