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Google 'Toilet ISP' Gag Not Without Precedent

Posted by Zonk on from the oh-the-halcyon-dot-com-days dept.

1sockchuck writes "Yesterday, Google's annual April Fools' joke featured Google TiSP, a free home wireless broadband service that connected via a 'commode-based router' and runs fiber cabling through the sewer system. This is actually not without precedent. Back in the dot-com boom, delivering broadband through sewers was the focus of CityNet Telecom, which raised $375 million in funding from major VC and private equity firms in 2000 and 2001. The company used remote-controlled robots to lay fiber through sewer lines and actually created sewer-based networks in Albuquerque and Indianapolis before merging with Universal Access in 2003."

18 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. What? by aero2600-5 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Fuck.. have fun maintaining that..

    --
    Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
    1. Re:What? by appleLaserWriter · · Score: 5, Funny

      Talk about a shitty job.

    2. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      On the other hand, neither solution sounds particularly reliable.

      No need to worry with the backhoe, just call Roto-Router. Roto-Router is the name, we wash your troubles down the drain.
    3. Re:What? by chenjeru · · Score: 5, Funny

      Pipes? Don't you mean tubes?

      --
      Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. - Will Rogers
    4. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      The company used remote-controlled robots to lay fiber through sewer lines
      I, for one, welcome our new brown robotic overlords...
  2. So, it could have happened! by necio_online · · Score: 2, Funny

    I thought it was not possible :) Seems like fun. Poor sysadmins :)

    --
    http://arhuaco.org/
  3. That explains a lot by barista · · Score: 5, Funny

    I live in Indy and wondered why my DSL was shitty a few years ago. Now I know.

  4. Oblig. Futurama: Voice over TiSP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    SewerCom Operator: Your call is being CO-NNE-CTED by SewerCom. Reach out and touch the sewers.

  5. ted stevens said it best by User+956 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Google TiSP, a free home wireless broadband service that connected via a 'commode-based router' and runs fiber cabling through the sewer system.

    This april fool's gag is not a truck. It's a series of tubes.

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
  6. Obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    There was also the MS iLoo gag... (just google it)

  7. Typo by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Funny

    delivering broadband through sewers was the focus of CityNet Telecom, which raised $375 million in funding from major VC

    Surely you meant "from major WC"...

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  8. My university tried it too by grahamsz · · Score: 5, Funny

    They had a bunch of old buildings spread out over the city and their phone system was deployed as huge bundles of copper pairs in a 6" UPVC pipe. Some time in the nineties they replaced their network with a single fibre connecting each outlying building to their main datacenter. Of course the pipes were still buried under the roads and still ended in their main wire closet where the new optical equipment had been housed.

    Cue some major refurbishment, and the plumbing crew enter the building and find a conveient 6" waste pipe in the basement to connect the shiny new toilets too.

    The SA at the time began the descriptive email with "I'd like to start by apologizing for the sh*tty network performance..."

  9. So by Trogre · · Score: 3, Funny

    How long until they trademark "Crappernet".

    Or does AOL already own that one?

    --
    "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
  10. redmond are the winners by nighty5 · · Score: 2, Funny

    only microsoft can turn turn shit into a real money spinner...

    definitely a april fools!

  11. I wouldn't mind working on that net... by istartedi · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...as long as I don't have to look at the logs.

    --
    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
  12. Re:Post-gag reporting is worse than the gags by inasra · · Score: 2, Funny

    I don't know what you are complaining about. For once i saw no dupes on slashdot and the icing on the cake was that the grammar and spelling was above average. Whats up with that? I mean Slashdot must be going down the tubes.

    --
    Life is a mystery. There is no point having a mystery if you are not curious.
  13. One day.... by ThePengwin · · Score: 3, Funny

    You arise from your toilet to see a small robot, with a camera looking at you, which replies to your shocked face "Nothing to worry, routine wire check" :P

  14. Tubes by Quzak · · Score: 3, Funny

    I knew the internet was a series of tubes, but this isnt quite what I had in mind.

    --
    Support your local school shooter, give them your firearms.