Broadband To Hit The South Pole

Albanach writes: "According to this story from the BBC bids are being invited to lay a fibre-optic cable some 1600 kilometres over polar ice, linking researchers at the South Pole with the rest of the planet. Currently, researcher's communications rely upon older satellites that have drifted from their geostationary orbits into ones that are now at least partly visible from the pole. The new cable will be laid on top of the 4km ice cap, and will have to cope with repeated freezing and stretching as the ice moves."

Comments

Challenge

[spencerogden]

This seems like an awefully expensive, challenging way to fix this problem. Are they going to need repeters to stretch fiber that distance?

Re:Challenge

[chill]

Lucent's new optical equipment can push a signal 2000-4000 KM without need for regeneration. Distance depends on speed. It is all DWDM OC-192 multiplex, so the "slow" speed is still ungodly fast.

Yes, this is a shipping product.

what about my house?

[gmr2048]

and i cant get DSL cuz i'm 200' too far from the CO?

Distance

[Pyrosz]

Can you just imagine what your ping time would be while playing Quake? Sheeesh. At least my Athlon wouldnt need the super fan I have on it now, just stick it outside to run. Although I suspect it would melt a hole in the ice! ;)

hmmm

[Pig Hogger]

I wonder if the routers will freeze more often. But of course not! They will use Linux, and so will be perfectly at home!

Weird

[Mupp252]

Broadband? South Pole? Internet? Penguins? I know there's some sort of wry humor in there somewhere.

I can hear it now --

[pyramid termite]

"If they can get broadband to the South Pole, why the hell can't we get it where we live?"

Why not wireless?

[photon317]

It would seem Antartica provides one of the most hostile environments imaginable for wires, especially fragile fiber. Someone may come up with a very novel cabling system that might work, but despite all efforts chances are it will break down in the first year of use because of some onforseen engineering complications.

So... why not go wireless? They seem to only consider satellites as wireless options, but why no ground-based wireless?

Surely for this amount of money one could devices a wireless repeater system to be more stable. Apparently you only have to get the signal about 2000km to Concordia and you're good to go - so why not deploy a wireless repeater station every X kilometers?

There are no obstructions in the path except for snow/ice storms in the air - surely one can find a frequency that deals with this problem well and provides decent bandwidth ver a decent distance right? If you can go 20km at a time it's only 100 repeater stations along the way (or maybe you'd place 2-3 of them 1 km or so apart at each repeat point for redundancy)

Re:Why not wireless?

[mikeplokta]

I thought of this, too. But how are you going to power those wireless repeaters. Solar is a bit of a bust, since it's dark for five or six months of the year. Of course, you could always lay a power cable...

Not necessarily

[multipartmixed]

Instead of laying the cable in a straight line, you lay it in S-shapes. Big S-shapes. That way, there's LOTS of slack, say 500% slack, for the ice sheet movement.

Of course, you have to use a fairly flexible conduit -- copper piping should do nicely, as long as you can figure out how to make sure it doesn't kink too badly on compression. The S-shapes, again, would help, but a better material would be even better. Maybe copper line with a thick kevlar braid, along the lines of the braid used in a Chinese finger puzzle/trap.

The Canadian Armed Forces has to recalibrate their microwave dishes every eight years or so up north for CFS Alert on Elsmere Island, because the ice moves. That gets expensive in the long run (Snowcats, helicopters, men), and would be MUCH worse for Antarctica.

And finally, finding a break in the fiber wouldn't be too hard, ever heard of a time-delay reflectometer?