Fl. County Halts FTTP Until Installation Is Safer

celerityfm writes "Warning: Deploying Verizon's new Fiber To The Premises (FTTP, see previous) in YOUR neighborhood may involve geysers of raw sewage spewing onto your front yard or sinkholes opening and swallowing moving vehicles. Well, Hillsborough County, host to one of the first FTTP trial sites, has ordered Verizon to stop deployment of FTTP until they can figure out how to stop creating sinkholes that open up under minivans with children inside. No word on whether SBC is having similar problems with their fiber roll-out."

Comments

A Little Trite?

[Skye16]

>> Warning: Deploying Verizon's new Fiber To The Premises (FTTP, see previous) in YOUR neighborhood may involve geysers of raw sewage spewing onto your front yard or sinkholes opening and swallowing moving vehicles.

Still sounds like a pretty fair deal to me!

Re:A Little Trite?

[SEWilco]

One of the things Japan does with their infrastructure is they run everything overhead.

But it sure makes a mess when a bird pecks through the overhead sewage lines.

Re:A Little Trite?

[ArsonSmith]

Yea, most Cable companies put geysers of raw sewage right in peoples living rooms.

Re:A Little Trite?

[WebCrapper]

As an Army Brat thats lived in too many states to count, I can second this. I'd much rather be living in a hurricane zone than in the midwest when thinking about the weather.

Heck, a lot of people party when a hurricane comes in, the media likes to play in the wind... See what happens when a tornado shows up somewhere - everyone runs like hell except for storm chasers trying to 1. help people that aren't lucky enough to win against a tornado 2. Study them - and 3 (I really don't even consider these people true chasers) - chasing tornados for art (cameras and video) and even then, all 3 groups still try to stay away from them.

I'd say a hurricane is like a dull knife, it can hurt you, but the damage isn't (usually) too bad. A tornado is focused like an exacto knife cutting right to the bone.

Now, mod me off topic and be done with it ;-)

Not on my premises, thank you....

[kngthdn]

Verizon: Delivering the wrong sort of fiber.

"until installation is safer"

[codergeek42]

thank God! We didn't want Joe Q Public running their own unpatched IIS servers, did we?

Low Bid Contractors

[ackthpt]

Verizon's getting their money's worth.

next on news 10, more sh!t than usual with your internet connection...

Expected outcome

[GillBates0]

It's well known that fiber "bulks up" waste and moves it through the colon more rapidly, preventing constipation and leading to larger, softer stools.

Large scale deployment of fiber is quite likely to lead to "geysers of raw sewage" if not properly contained.

What kind of speeds are we talking about?

[heldlikesound]

Because if I can crawl out of a sewage filed sinkhole and download new Slackware ISO's in under a minute, you may have yourself a deal.

Re:Dear gods, its just an optical cable!

[Ender_Stonebender]

I live in Pinellas county, Florida, which happens to be one county over from Hillsborough. The problem is not FTTP installation, it's the fact that the water table is about two feet below the ground, resulting in every underground conduit being stuck in that two-foot space, and shitty as-built documentation. No one here has a basement because if they did, the only thing you could keep in it would be alligators. They run into the same things trying to install natural gas pipelines.

--Ender

201st sinkhole! 202nd sewage geyser!

[HDlife]

The problem is that there are 2,000 workers busting pipes that the county has to fix. Even if the county can bill Verizon later, the county certainly doesn't have the staff to play cleanup to Verizon's contractor.

This is probably a great deal for the diggers; the cost of paying the county to fix the breaks is probably less than preventing them. Therfore, the only stick that the county has is to say STOP! No more digging until you clean up your act!

Re:WTF?

[kovarg]

I'm local to Hillsborough and all day we've been hearing about this stoppage. Sinkholes are a buzz word because they are a (forgive the pun) a money pit for insurance companies. Potholes, ditches and everything else where the ground is unlevel can be dubbed as sinkholes. That is not to say we don't have sinkholes, but nowhere near as many as are reported. It is a large enough problem that some zip codes are blocked out of renters insurance due to sinkhole problems, but Verizon hasn't been running around and draining pockets of the water table. The real headline should be: Verizon has morons digging trenches.

Re:FS

[swordboy]

Right, but can you get it to open only for minivans with children in them?

I work for a Telco

[PhraudulentOne]

I work for a telco and we plough cable every day. We do this in populated neighborhoods and new lots. It is extremely rare that we cut a cable (in fact I do not know of one in over a year), but NEVER a pipe. This work is not really Verizon's fault as it seems they are hiring subcontractors to do the work. This is a simple case of incompetence where the subcontractors do not call for a LOCATE (or they get a locate done so far in advance that it washes away or something).
Also, I'm sure you all realize that this has nothing to do with fiber to the home, it has to do with people not being able to dig properly.. no matter what they are laying in the ground.

children and fiber

[Tumbleweed]

Okay, so some kids may be lost, but this is fiber to the home we're talking about here! Some sacrifices must be made.

Besides, it's not like they're taxpayers or anything. Plus, what're they gonna DO, CRY about it? Puh-lease. Stupid cry-babies.

Re:Karma

[Megaweapon]

So, anybody know if the county voted Republican or Democrat?

Hmmmm, geysers of raw sewage... Nope, still sounds like either party.

Re:WTF? You RTFA?!!

[Winkhorst]

Assuming you're not just being ironic (sorry, I don't speak Initialese), NO, they don't have to call the 800 number. They have maps. You know, those paper thingies with lines and symbols on them that let you figure out where the subway stops are and that kind of stuff? But the maps are wrong. This is because they are old, and apparently nobody bothered to update them as things were changed over the years. And, as someone else has pointed out, the water table in Florida is somewhere around your knees, so you have to bury everything at the same level. And it's not a good idea to install stuff above ground because of the weather--lots of cyclonic wind conditions and the like. So you either give the place back to the Seminole Indians, who had enough sense not to invent electricity, or you dig and hope you don't hit something.

Now the county keeps talking about using satellites and GPS, which gives you some insight into the state of THEIR neural network, so I have to conclude that the fault lies mainly with those same officials for not keeping the maps current.

Old wisdom made new

[Bastian]

If you're ever going out into the wilderness, bring a PVC pipe with you. If you get lost, you can bury it in the ground, and a Verizon crew will be along shortly to break it.