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?

[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?

[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).

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

[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?

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

[istartedi]

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

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...

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.