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?

That explains a lot

[barista]

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

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"...

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..."

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

[istartedi]

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