Google 'Toilet ISP' Gag Not Without Precedent

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."

Comments

What?

[aero2600-5]

Fuck.. have fun maintaining that..

Re:What?

[appleLaserWriter]

Talk about a shitty job.

Re:What?

[moosesocks]

They could be using storm sewers, in which case, it wouldn't be particularly unpleasant to maintain. (Quite the opposite in fact, as the pipes would be huge and easily accessible)

On the other hand, neither solution sounds particularly reliable.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What?

[arivanov]

The investigation into these technologies happened mostly because many city councils got pissed off by the non-stop digging to lay fiber during dot-bomb and started threatening to introduce limits on how many times you can dig up a road as well as license fees on digging. The number discussed in the UK were once per 5 years and something in the tens of thousands of pounds per linear meter of dig licensing fee if you have to re-dig before this expires.

The dot bomb ended and the surviving telecom operators successfully fought it off. The licensing regime as not introduced.

Otherwise, fiber through sewerage is a viable tech. The only reason it is not being done more often is that most of the water utilities who control the sewers live in the 17th century (or would like to) and it is nearly impossible to negotiate a sensible access deal with them.

Re:What?

[chenjeru]

Pipes? Don't you mean tubes?

Re:What?

[MichaelSmith]

They could be using storm sewers, in which case, it wouldn't be particularly unpleasant to maintain

Once I got called out during heavy rain because a system went down due to flooding under the false floor. The building had been flooded through the phone cable pipe. The tech who came out from the phone company told me with a straight face that their network is virtually an additional storm water system.

We opened a pit down hill from my building, tugged on a cable and cleared the blockage which had caused the flood.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

The company used remote-controlled robots to lay fiber through sewer lines

I, for one, welcome our new brown robotic overlords...

Re:What?

[rtb61]

Fibre through storm water or sewer is a fantasy, have you seen the device they use to clear storm water and sewer blockages. That spinning bit on the end of drain rooters would have an interesting time with any cable in the pipe. As for large bore pipes where people can walk though them, they are so infrequent that it is pointless and the typical repair solution of relining the inside of those pipes would interfere with any cable fixed to the walls of the pipe.

The same hurdle remains as always, holding your breath while your capital flows out until you have sufficient network in the ground to start generating income, while the incumbent copper telcos drastically drop their prices in order to starve you out and try to pick up your fibre optic network on the cheap at the bankruptcy auction.

It really has to be done on an international scale, where you generate sufficient capital to target a less populous western countries (fewer connections and easier access), gain a dominant position in that market with your fibre optic network and with that revenue, and some additional capital, expand into other more complex markets (with the gained technical expertise and experience).

So, it could have happened!

[necio_online]

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

That explains a lot

[barista]

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

Other pipelines, too

[UnderCoverPenguin]

Many years ago, I met an engineer from a natural gas company that installed data fiber in its network of gas pipelines. He explained to me how they designed a modified pipeline "pig" to string the fiber optic cables.

Re:Other pipelines, too

[Anonymous Coward]

If I recall right, there was a firm in Texas that was going to run fiber optic cables through gas lines and made deals with the pipeline owners. In court action however, that company was stopped from doing so as the court decided that easements for right of way the pipeline companies had were only for pipelines and not for fiber optic cables. Wish I had the details on this but I seem to be too tired to chose the right search words. I do remember that something about the suit made me suspicious as to why the land owner filed it.

Re:Other pipelines, too

[moosesocks]

Really? I'd think that would reduce capacity, and make maintenance unbearably difficult. It would likely prevent any future 'pigs' from traveling through the pipe, and require a portion of the line to be shut down and evacuated before any maintenance could be performed.

Of course, I could be completely wrong.

ted stevens said it best

[User 956]

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.

Typo

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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"...

Re:Typo

[__aaxwdb6741]

WC = Water Closet, for those who don't know english.

My university tried it too

[grahamsz]

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..."

So

[Trogre]

How long until they trademark "Crappernet".

Or does AOL already own that one?

redmond are the winners

[nighty5]

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

definitely a april fools!

I wouldn't mind working on that net...

[istartedi]

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

Re:My plugin sucketh

[fabs64]

Because 2.0 has it by default?

Wasn't Paris (city) doing this too?

[NBK]

I watched some Mega-Cities series of documentaries from National Geographic and there was one about Paris and it's sewer system. A large part of it was talking about how they were using it to run Fibre throughout the city. I'm pretty sure it was the same US company doing it too, robots and all. It was a fibre/wireless network.

Re:Wasn't Paris (city) doing this too?

[phayes]

Iliad, the parent company of Free.fr announced here that they will be spending a billion Euros to deploy fiber to the home throughout Paris during 2007 & 2008. This network will be deployed using Paris' sewers. As most of Paris is 5-6 stories tall, the sewer access for each building is appropriately large. The sewers themselves serve as storm drains and are usually accessible to sanitation workers. There are around a thousand sanitation workers who are down there anyway to maintain this vital service, so, scatological jokes aside, using the sewers to distribute networks this way is the cheapest & smartest means of deployment in a city like Paris.

I can't wait to get my 50Mbit upload & download, unlimited telephone to the USA & other countries & multiple TV decoders for 30 a month...

Re:Post-gag reporting is worse than the gags

[inasra]

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.

London Hydraulic Power Company

[mlush]

The London Hydraulic Power Company became an early example on internet tubes.

One day....

[ThePengwin]

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

Tubes

[Quzak]

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

Fiber in Sewer, I own the former CityNet fiber net

[sewerfiber]

Nice to see this on Slashdot. I'm the guy that purchased much of the former CityNet/Universal Access fiber assets out of bankruptcy. I own the Albuquerque ring. In the 7 years since this network has been operational it has only had 1 single failure. That happened while the ring was in bankruptcy and no body was looking after it. When you compare this to the normal way people put fiber in the ground, its night and day. The local CLEC's here in ABQ have at least 1 to 3 fiber cuts per year in the downtown central business district, where the former CityNet network lives. Fiber in the sewer is highly viable and very low cost to deploy. In fact our company is in the process starting new construction in several different cities around the western US. We own the robots and are purchasing more robot assets to help build networks. With fiber to the home/curb/business/sink growing like crazy, this technology makes it very easy, low cost and QUICK to deploy. We hold patents or exclusive licenses to patents on the technologies involved. I'd post our website, but knowing what SlashDot would do to our poor widdle bandwidth, we don't want to get killed. :) If you want more information contact me via sewerfiber@gmail.com