But how will they deal with valves?

I thought they were going to use sewer pipes, since those shouldn't have valves in them very often.

I am pretty sure a gate valve (or a butterly valve for that matter) will make a great fibre cutter.

Getting the fibre into and out of the pipe will be interesting (not quite NP hard but close!).

Then there is the small matter of the guys typically employed to dig holes by the water companies not, generally, being the sharpest spade in the shed (or, more likely, back hoe in the garage)

I am sure they will spend their budget assessing these issues with due dilligence!

To be fair, most times they have the most appualing data where to dig up, even after someone has been around to mark up a road it hasn't been accurate.

I worked for Severn Trent for several years sending gangs out to fix burst mains: it once took 15 holes to find the right pipe, despite the chap with the detector wandering around the place! The lack of awareness of the network as a whole is staggering, with leakage figures in megalitres per day.

Isn't there a way to use the water itself as the transmission medium?

No scientist here - OK you knew that already.

For those DVers choosing not to share their vast knowledge this may be a good starting point :

https://www.hydro-international.com/content/article/underwater-electromagnetic-propagation

Elon will suggest a mini-sub. A tiny-sub.. that then pulls a thin fibre, which pulls a thicker fibre and so on.

All that megaherz in the water though, homoeopaths will kick up a stink.

"All that megaherz in the water though, homoeopaths will kick up a stink."

It'd only work if you dilute it enough. How many litres per hertz would that have to be?

Elon will suggest a mini-sub.

I'm sure Raquel Welch has to be involved somewhere.

From my days working for a submarine cable manufacturer I recall that keeping water away from the actual fibres is extremely important. The refractive index of water is close enough to glass that it kind of "wicks" the light out. So the cable is filled with some water repellent chemical etc. around the fibres (as well as the cable being waterproof, etc.) and the joints are similarly very well protected.

Obviously any land based outdoor rated or buriable fibre should be similarly protected but it does feel like there is a bit of a difference to then sticking it in a high pressure, high flow water main!

"between Barnsley and Penistone"

They're going to have problems with their press releases blocked by the geographically challenged.

I was more thinking blocked due to Scunthorpe Syndrome.

Just as well they aren't going via Wombwell. (Yes, it's a place, yes it's in the Peoples' Republic of South Yorkshire).

Yorkshire Water were known for being one of the most leaky water suppliers, so I wonder if they will be 1s and 0s coming out of people's tap too : -) ?

At least there will be no number 2's :)

what's the wavelength?

what's the wavelength?

c/Kenneth

This will be useful, because if you're drilling into the water main 8500 times to tap into the cable for each individual customer, there are probably going to quite a few more of them. Also, won't the water supply need to be temporarily cut off for the whole street every time someone signs up for broadband fibre in order to drill a new hole for them?

I think the idea is this is just to link towns not branch off into every house

It should have been law years ago that all new housing being built had a large multi-purpose duct is laid for future use. Would have prevented a lot of repeat excavations.

Agreed. In my town they replaced all the cast-iron gas pipes with plastic ones about 10 years ago. Almost every street in my estate was dug up. It would have cost them bugger extra all to lay some ducting or even empty pipe alongside to allow for future fibre. I guess that the benefit doesn't show up in this period's budget so no one wants to spend, but it's very short sighted.

More likely "dog in the manger" economics. It needs the utility regulators and local authorities to bang heads together and make the suppliers agree on a common wayleave type of system so they can use each other's ducts. At the moment they all want their own and no-one else in it, leaving our local pavements like some sort of mad quilting project. The road is those 1930s big concrete slabs, which they don't like going through, and they make a horlicks of the reinstatement when they do.

"It needs the utility regulators and local authorities to bang heads together"

Very, vary hard. The local authorities are amongst those whose heads need to be banged, otherwise they'll conduct one of their rare resurfacings just before the utilities dig it up.

That they would pass my service through the clean water supply - I don't want any more sewage on my internet than is there already!

Yeah, alright, I'm getting it...

I don't want any more sewage on my internet than is there already!

IMHO the greater risk is the leak of internet shit (of which there is plenty) into a clean water supply.

Yuk...

It might mean all the crap gets flushed out.

...included in your drinking water!

Exactly. They should be using sewer pipes if they want to use pipes. I don't want to be drinking bits of fibre!

Google TiSP (short for Toilet Internet Service Provider)

https://archive.google.com/tisp/index.html

Surely there will be an increased risk of phishing?