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Steam Heat to High Speed Internet

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the warm-and-wet dept.

jrmski writes "Thom Greco, an astute businessman from the crumbling town of Wilkes-Barre is betting the future of its downtown on a new state of the art fiber optic network. He recently purchased the former Steam Heat Authority, and the underground pipes associated with it. The pipes provide clear advantages in connecting every downtown building with access faster than what's currently available in Philly."

2 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Know something we don't? by AlaskanUnderachiever · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Jesus, another "dark fiber" post.

    I'm guessing none of you guys have ever DONE a cable/fiber install. You don't lay excess capacity for "future use". You lay excess capacity because no sane company wants to have to dig up a 2 mile stretch of trench to fix the line every time it goes dark.

    It's not EXCESS CAPACITY. It's being cheap. You lay enough fiber that you should almost never have to dig it up to repair it again. Fibers go dark for all sorts of stupid reasons. Even in good installs.

    The idea is to lay SO MUCH that you can always just switch over to another "good" line when one goes bad.

    What's cheaper? The extra cost of the fiber initially or the HUGE cost in having to dig up the line multiple times to repair it?

    --
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  2. Sounds like... by benja · · Score: 5, Funny

    1. Buy former Steam Heat Authority
    2. Create a state-of-the-art fiber optic network using the steam pipes
    3. ???
    4. Profit!

    At least the article doesn't really say more than that.