The Biggest Dangers to Your Fiber

ffejie writes "Fred Lawler, SVP of Global Field Services at Level 3 has an amusing look at some strange fiber cuts that he's seen in his days maintaining a large fiber network across the U.S. Whether it's squirrels, vandals, storms or truckers, it seems everyone has a new way to destroy the fiber that keeps the global communications infrastructure afloat."

Comments

Survival tip: always carry fiber.

[Tackhead]

Reminds me of the old joke:

Whether you like to go on a cruise or hike across the backcountry, the experienced traveler always carries a length of fiber-optic cable. Whether you end up shipwrecked and stranded on a desert island, or lost in the wilderness, all you have to do is bury the cable in the sand, snow, or dirt.

A few hours later, a guy driving a backhoe will be along to dig up the fiber. Hitch a ride with him back to civilization.

Crack heads?

[Fishead]

A buddy of mine had to sit at the bottom of a muddy hole in the middle of a sunday night splicing fiber once. Somebody used a truck to yank a length out of the ground thinking it was copper they could recycle.

Re:Learning to read?

[DudeTheMath]

Seriously, when they only bury it four inches deep, it doesn't matter. My fiber has been cut three times, twice by the neighbor just edging his lawn. Finally, Verizon sent out their own techs instead of a contractor, and buried it eighteen inches or so.

What cuts the 4G wireless

[retroworks]

America, always fighting the last war against squirrels. We need to look forward, it is the flying squirrels who represent the risk tomorrow.

Re:What cuts the 4G wireless

[gman003]

Fact: The Predator drone was originally created to defend against the flying squirrel menace. However, due to normal government incompetence, it was instead used in the War on Terror.

Soldiers at the front continued to be baffled by why the drone's decoy launcher is filled with acorns instead of flares, something they, too, attribute to typical government incompetence.

Eminent Domain

[dcollins]

FTA -- "Well I’ve saved the best for last. There was a landowner whose property stretched across the border between Georgia and Florida. He was mad at Florida DOT because he didn’t get enough money when they purchased the right-of-way to widen the highway that cut through his property."

Okay, super-raw nerve here... because this is happening to my father's farm even as we speak. (Power company taking a strip directly through the middle of the farm on a state border, used for 5 generations by my family, for an unnecessary power line to nowhere.) The guy is not mad "because he didn't get enough money". He's mad because you threatened him with eminent domain, that he had no capacity to refuse giving up the strip of land, and he's super-mad and frustrated to realize he doesn't actually control what he thought was his own property. And you ruined the use of that property by cutting it in two. And yes, the power company we're dealing with is spewing similar spin in the PR battle. But that doesn't make it so.

He's mad and feeling powerless because you stole something under threat of state violence. Sorry, today I can't laugh at what you thought was your crazy-hilarious "best" punch-line.

Re:Eminent Domain

[Kral_Blbec]

Reading Comprehension fail.
There was already a highway running through the property. Eminent domain was used to purchase land to widen it. That's a big difference. He lost a few lanes worth of usable land from the border (and was paid for it), but that's hardly the same thing as punching a new hole down the center.

He was mad at Florida DOT because he didn’t get enough money when they purchased the right-of-way to widen the highway that cut through his property.

Re:Eminent Domain

[Mr. Slippery]

He's mad and feeling powerless because you stole something under threat of state violence.

"Stole something"? Who issued that land deed that turned a section of the planet's surface into "property"?

Property is created by the state. No one in the U.S. has some natural right to land, it's all stolen property. (Except maybe some reservation territory, and much of that was stolen from one tribe by the feds and given to another tribe.) Your "right" to "own" some specific piece of land is dependent on the public good.

Now, certainly eminent domain is sometimes used to fatten the pockets of the powerful rather than for the public good, and sometimes people are not justly compensated. Those are legitimate complaints. But complaining about the existence of eminent domain betrays an ignorance of the nature of property. It has always been the case that private property can be taken for public use, provided that appropriate compensation is made. It's in the Constitution, for cryin' out loud.

old problem, new medium

[kermidge]

In '67 whilst working for GenTel Wisconsin plowing feeders [average plow depth ~4'] and trenching drops we cut a main [around 120-pair] line from Milwaukee to Madison. No one was happy. Dug out the break, carved out a seat for the splicer, put up a sunshade. Not the most fun we had, but close. Not our fault, as it turned out: the charts were wrong, and the info on them was wrong as well.

Re:Learning to read?

[dbc]

4 inches???? Ummmm... sorry, that ain't code. At least not in California. I own some mountain (ranch land) property in the only county in California that does not have a single stop light :) Any time I've tried to dig a hole that had to be in a particular place, it usually requires blasting granite rock to get more than 12 inches deep. Still, the phone company puts things down 24 inches. Now, sometimes they build a "Woody wall" -- for a simple copper pair it sometimes isn't worth going down 24 inches, so they go down as far as they can and then pile rocks on top until they get 24 inches of cover. They don't have to walk very far to find enough rocks :) And the building inspector signs it off. (It's call a "Woody wall" because a Cat driver named Woody had the idea originally.)

Anyway.... a couple of years ago the local phone company put 10,000 feet of fiber across my property. They did that right and proper. First, a D8 Cat comes along with a vibratory pre-ripper that can chew through most rock and that you can hear two miles away. Then a D6 pulling a ripper/plow lays down conduit. A third D6 covers. They blow fiber from pull boxes. They put down 10,000 feet without blasting, although they were a little choosy about the route. (BTW, a D8 is big enough that moving it around on a low boy is an oversize load and requires permits and such, so they don't use it unless they need it. You also might wonder why they have fiber in an area with more bear than people -- it feeds mountain top communication towers, mainly. But I could have a DS3 at my otherwise off-grid cabin if I wanted to pay the monthly :)

Anyway.... 4 inches? That's bush league. I can't imagine how the building inspector signs that off.