I would be grateful if someone could upgrade my knowledge on new techniques to lay down fiber cable in urban areas, either in sewerage, water conduit or directly in their own protective duct.
Are there any new techniques which enable minimum digging and damage to streets and urban facilities to lay down fiber optic cable?
There used to be a company in Canada, called Stream Communications, who ran fibre through sewer lines. They developed robots, that cleaned the line and then attached the fibre to the wall. However, IIRC, they went under, during that big bust a few years back.
Among the issues of running fiber on electrical utility poles is the cable support mechanism. Some of the newer fiber packages are using a totally nonconductive construction allowing the fiber to be placed within the required exclusion area for mounting other services to utility poles. This is important in areas where you do have access to the utility poles, but the density of electrical service lines would cause a traditional fiber with either a metallic messenger wire or strength strand to be mounted with less than the minimum clearance under the fiber strand.
I've heard rumors about a new fiber optic cable that is installed in the asphalt, similar to the sensors for stop lights. Cut a grove in the asphalt, lay in the fiber, re-fill the asphalt. But I've never seen it, or looked it up, so you're on your own there.
Several years ago, I worked for a telecommunications company. We often ran fibre into a building via electrical ducts. We could never have done that with copper cables. Also, in some areas, the electical utility will run fibre to customers, along side the AC power feeds.
Given some of the roads around here, I'd be worried about fibre breaks. Incidentally, a company I used to work for, ran fibre along side railroad tracks. It worked fine, except for one day, when a large sink hole appeared under one side of the track, and took out the fibre. Then there's always "backhoe fade". ;-)
I think I've seen pictures of that. Did the Lightbrigade company show up at that break? Yeah, I'd have issues with the road conditions as well. I would think it would have to be in highly urban areas as those roads seem to get the most attention.
Hi alodoiska, here in Fiji Islands, we have 2 companys [i.e Telecom] which both uses fiber optic. one has an advantage, they have underground pipes telecom chambers and all but the other dont but they have electrical post. so what the latter company did is that they run their cables from electrical post to post and they have now more advantage than the former compnay [underground]. this is only a suggestion.
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