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Fibre-optic circuit laying

Perhaps a slightly technical question - something I'm working on.. any network builders here..?

Given this type of road..

fibre-cable.jpg


No kerb, no "edging". Lightly travelled, tarmac probably lasts a long time, but drainage is poor and edges tend to disintegrate over long periods. Other roads like this do occasionally get resurfaced, those which are two cars wide and where lorries churn up the tarmac over time..

Would a network builder plough the tarmac and bury the circuits underneath it, or, would they prefer to bury them in the verges, or, build poles and hang the circuits on them?

For info, the BT network in the area is a mix of underground and poles.
 
As always this would be mostly a matter of cost (including time) and the area would need to be properly assessed first. The builder would also need to consider wayleaves / access rights and related fees (one side of the road could be different from the other, as could the road itself etc.).

I've seen micro-trenching used down the middle, rather than at the sides, of smaller country roads but as to whether or not this would be cheaper than building a telegraph pole or digging a ditch at the side is, as above, a bit harder to answer. But I think poles make better sense at the distribution end of a deployment, when you're near to the homes.
 
The majority of the land is owned by the same family, operated as a "trust". That said, the parts they own are not all contiguous. And since they live here, and they also rent out property in the area, and that fixed-line broadband here is diabolical, it would seem to be in their interests to permit this. I am checking on that now. If we assume that this presents no problem for the moment..

I'm trying to tie together some figures I have here regarding estimated costs to try to establish whether they are in any way accurate, or pie in the sky.

The current set of BT poles are, depending on how you view them, either quaint in a 1930s-Poirot kind of way, or an eyesore (it depends on where you live and how much of them you see). Having a second duplicate set of poles isn't going to be attractive hence a preference for buried ducting. The roads do already have some utilities ducted underneath them - gas and water, I think. I have no idea where the BT lines go, you can only see the over-ground sections.

All of the premises to which it would connect, bar a very small number, are directly "on" the roads e.g. at the edges, not disparately arranged so in that respect while rural it's more like an urban cable style deployment from the point of view of connecting homes to it - a tee point from the network as it passes then up a drive or under a lawn.
 
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Don't know if this is the type of video you'd find interesting(best watched in HD on YouTube)-


[youtube]a8bzZajwR50[/youtube]
:hrmph:
 
You could do a "British Rail"; put it in some plastic piping and chuck it under the bushes at the side of the track.
 
That video looks really useful, thanks. I should get an answer about the way-leaves shortly.

I'm just trying to qualify some numbers I have here, and certain assumptions.

One particular challenge is the closure of single land roads where those roads are the only means of access to some properties. That said, there are barely a handful of roads like that.

The other is where the ducting for other utilities is. At one end of the village a gas main has been excavated - perhaps, a leak, and I can see a stack of bore-holes drilled which makes me think that was for the purpose of locating said gas main, probably put in fifty years ago.
 
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Video is superb and just what I was looking for - I shall indeed take up your suggestion of putting it on the big TV later on. Thank you. I suspect I should have a nose around the B4RN website too.

The trenching technique which can manage 4000m a day looks ideal (the total loop to lay isn't much more than that, but doing the village in one day isn't likely to happen!), one of the issues is that some of the equipment is wider than the lanes are so it's likely to be two separate solutions, one for the "thoroughfare" (2 to 3 cars wide) and another for the "lanes". The longest single section would be for the backhaul, across "the middle of nowhere".

It certainly isn't rocket-science, is it.
 
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Mark,

I don't think you have messaged me as of yet. But, if you have, I accidentally cleared my messaging inbox so I won't have your message, if you did indeed send it (which I don't think you did - but thought it was worth saying just in case).

I have a great deal of respect for the B4RN folk - we need more people with the "get up and go" attitude in this world.
 
Video is superb and just what I was looking for - I shall indeed take up your suggestion of putting it on the big TV later on. Thank you.

Glad you liked it.:) Actually I just meant watch at the 1080 resolution rather than the small embedded box on the forum. Might be worth using one of those free YouTube download services to make a copy to your local disk - there's quite a lot of info in that video and it's Murphy's Law that a useful video might disappear from YouTube one day(720 seems to be the highest for audio and video - about 760MB).
 
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I haven't sent the message yet. I knocked off early today, had a tooth extracted yesterday and feeling bloodied and bruised :(

Video is very interesting. Have heard all the terms before, but it's nice to actually see the various techniques in action. All in other countries, of course.

Not to make the mistake of thinking "this is really easy stuff", but it's not exactly difficult either.

Waiting on some information, will be in touch.
 
Glad you liked it.:) Actually I just meant watch at the 1080 resolution rather than the small embedded box on the forum. Might be worth using one of those free YouTube download services to make a copy to your local disk - there's quite a lot of info in that video and it's Murphy's Law that a useful video might disappear from YouTube one day(720 seems to be the highest for audio and video - about 760MB).

Good point: video saved, thanks.
 
Very positive news on the way-leaves.

OK next one.

Where do we get the backhaul from?

Almost irrespective of the size of the area to be covered, there are only two points of presence that I can see that are very near to here:

Bentley phone exchange and Alton phone exchange.

Bentley only has two providers - BTW and Talk Talk. For various reasons related to conflict of interest I don't think it can be BT Wholesale.

Alton, the more logical choice perhaps, has C & W and Sky. But then we're not looking to buy a consumer broadband product.

In the absence of a "compare backhaul" type of website - what sort of thing should I be looking at? For instance Virgin might well have fibre that runs along the side of the A31 just near here that can be trunked off from, but I wouldn't know. So how do I establish who can supply?
 
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We don't know. That's the thing. I can pull up a map of the Level3 network which doesn't pass quite close enough to here but that's just one.

Already spoke to Virgin Media business, though I think their quote was based on a BT-provided solution.

I guess it's a bespoke exercise in calling people.
 
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