3 ms·

The cables are mostly glass fibre, and glass is about as good as you can get in terms of being safe with water. There are obviously coatings too, and for water

• dataflow 5y ago
  What I don't get is why nobody here is accounting for harsher realities than "pure water flowing in a pipe at a normal temperature". To give two examples, what happens if the pipe bursts at some point? Or needs to be replaced for whatever reason? If the fibers don't get torn at that point, you can still end up with sediment in the pipe. Wouldn't that potentially damage the fibers downstream? Would people potentially end up drinking bits of glass? I could go on but it surprises me few people here are discussing the things that could go wrong.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    Because it's wishful thinking along the lines of 'oh, great, internet out of my tap, why didn't I think of that'. This is a problem with many technologies that would be great to have but that are a lot harder than they seem to be at first glance, for instance VAWTs have been soaking up funding for many decades now and will continue to do so without ever giving a proper ROI because it seems to be such a great idea that every couple of years it goes through a revival.
• jacquesm 5y ago
  The cables are not 'mostly glass fibre' they are a tube within another tube and then the standard fibre optic cable is blown through that inner tube like it normally would be, otherwise the whole thing will be utterly unreliable to the point that it will be broken before your trial properly begins. That said all of the other complexity remains.