-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are my own and do not represent the views of Ameritech or it's alliance partners. Blanc Weber Postulates: > -With the rise of fiber telcos are laying fewer cable > routes and just stuffing the routes they do dig up with > more fiber than is necessary for replacement of the > existing copper, leaving some major areas with only a > single path in and out as one bundle of fiber replaces > tons of copper that was laid in multiple paths > originally becayse it would not fit in one path. Saves > the telcos money, but a single backhoe might be able to > cause some major damage now... Well, I can't speak for the other Telco's, but here in the Midwest this is flat out untrue. Project looking glass which resulted in a Billion dollars of additional fiber installed in the last year, and an additional billion a year for the next 6 years is completely diversified. Countercurrent rings, diverse pathways, the whole bit. I believe the Internet was a model for these strategies. I might add that this is not new, we've been pursuing these strategies as long as I've been here. (about ten years) There were a couple of incidents involving landscape contractors in the last year, none resulted in significant outage. This is particularly interesting since the utilities run a service called JULIE (for Joint Utility Locating something or other) which you are supposed to call 48 hours before you dig, we'll send someone out to make sure you don't encounter anything. Brian Williams Extropian Cypherpatriot "Cryptocosmology: Sufficently advanced comunication is indistinguishable from noise." --Steve Witham -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLYiI2NCcBnAsu2t1AQGlPwP/ax2RmIZf0gFe86gwQmFqxNKcte5lRscW 2Y3AaPjLWIkN9O8IfMf5ZUaLQMMCEKJWfWUzq1B53Gwp3O3aTvpNhCpCnrHI8od7 uw8OcwyNKkYy4MyAtd4aCDkf7dMDuo4APZgSrS7IFSVRIK5ciFx6FopYyATuaOCa ZuywqzZWObI= =2g/i -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----