This chapter offers a descriptive view of cable temporality from the perspective
of network operators and those involved in system maintenance
and repair. Examining the “soft temporalities” of these operators’ labor, the
chapter illustrates a tension at the heart of media’s infrastructures: in many
places, slowness, stability, embeddedness, and fixity of infrastructures are
what enable speed and acceleration. After describing the “grounded speed”
of the cable network, the chapter turns to the phenomemon of temporal
irruptions: moments when the assemblage of temporal processes that
enable network operation and network speed suddenly and radically
changes the network.