46 ms·

Once upon a time, a colleague from South Africa told me that they use fiber cable everywhere. I was surprised by this that they seem to be more advanced than us

by sharpy 1y ago

Once upon a time, a colleague from South Africa told me that they use fiber cable everywhere. I was surprised by this that they seem to be more advanced than us. Turns out that copper wire gets stolen, so they have no choice...

vorpalhex 1y ago
There's an old network admin adage that if you ever need a backhoe to show up, all you need to do is bury some fiber optic cable. Soon enough a backhoe will magically appear to sever your buried fiber. This trick works great if you ever get lost. They say a master network admin always carries 6ft of fiber optic just for this reason.
- itronitron 1y ago
  In my experience, you can easily find any buried telecom cable as long as you dig several feet away from the marked utility lines.
  - c2247946 1y ago
    [dead]
- esseph 1y ago
  "Backhoe fade"
bregma 1y ago
Plenty of stories about yahoos hitching their pickup to a telephone repeater box around where I live to pull the copper cable only to find it's fibre. You can't beat stupid.
petsfed 1y ago
Near my home in the pacific northwest region of the US, I saw at a construction site a big spool (~1m diameter, 1+ meter tall) of cable with "Fiber, NOT copper" spray painted on its side. I cannot imagine how frustrating it would be to have a project like that delayed because some junkies stole a few hundred pounds of fiber optic cable, just to discard it when they realized that it wasn't something they could easily fence.
gs17 1y ago
Looks like the same is happening here: > The next step the agency is considering is using fiberglass composite instead of aluminum to construct guard rails “to remove the value to the thieves.”
userbinator 1y ago
They also have far more mobile phones than landlines, because it's easier and cheaper to put up a few towers than run wires to every building. http://geographylists.com/list21n.html http://geographylists.com/list21n.html

by sharpy 1y ago

vorpalhex 1y ago

There's an old network admin adage that if you ever need a backhoe to show up, all you need to do is bury some fiber optic cable. Soon enough a backhoe will magically appear to sever your buried fiber. This trick works great if you ever get lost. They say a master network admin always carries 6ft of fiber optic just for this reason.

itronitron 1y ago
In my experience, you can easily find any buried telecom cable as long as you dig several feet away from the marked utility lines.
- c2247946 1y ago
  [dead]
esseph 1y ago
"Backhoe fade"

bregma 1y ago

Plenty of stories about yahoos hitching their pickup to a telephone repeater box around where I live to pull the copper cable only to find it's fibre. You can't beat stupid.

petsfed 1y ago

Near my home in the pacific northwest region of the US, I saw at a construction site a big spool (~1m diameter, 1+ meter tall) of cable with "Fiber, NOT copper" spray painted on its side. I cannot imagine how frustrating it would be to have a project like that delayed because some junkies stole a few hundred pounds of fiber optic cable, just to discard it when they realized that it wasn't something they could easily fence.

gs17 1y ago

Looks like the same is happening here: > The next step the agency is considering is using fiberglass composite instead of aluminum to construct guard rails “to remove the value to the thieves.”

userbinator 1y ago

They also have far more mobile phones than landlines, because it's easier and cheaper to put up a few towers than run wires to every building. http://geographylists.com/list21n.html http://geographylists.com/list21n.html