Graeme Wall wrote:
On 11/04/2021 12:08, Tweed wrote:
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 10:15:18 on Sun, 11 Apr
2021, Graeme Wall remarked:

Rather than laying a whole new cable, can't the existing cable
supplying every house be used?

Not enough capacity and doesn't necessarily go where you think it
would.

I've lived in two village now where about half the houses are [still]
supplied by 240v wiring on poles, which looks a bit like phone cables,
unless you know better.

Which reminds me....

It’s oft been stated that we can’t hang optic fibre cables off power poles
in rural areas (which would make it so very much cheaper and easier)
because we don’t/can’t possibly do that sort of thing because the power
companies and phone companies couldn’t possibly safely work together etc
etc.

Who said that?


It is one those things that has probably been said for the past 100 years.
The reality is that power cables were not put on telegraph / telephone
wires.
This was more to do with the specification of pole used as one designed to
hold up light weight phone lines would not be strong enough to hold heavier
electric cables coming along later nor tall enough to allow a safe working
zone beneath the power lines for the telephone man
Other way round no problem if the power pole was there first and the phone
line has to be below the power so that telecom engineers can work on their
components without personal danger and disruption to the electric supply.

However, those sharing agreements date back to when we had state run
entities whose staff applied a little common sense.
Now we have infrastructure owned by private companies and guess what, if
openreach or other fibre installer want to attach a fibre cable to the
power poles the power distribution company says sorry,
Fibre is new technology not covered by the old agreements so we want a lot
of dosh.
So the telecom company prefers to provide its own and more than likely
under ground as that gives better protection anyway.
Fibre is often run on distribution networks anyway for their own purposes,
cables with a fibre component within have been available for years, I think
it was the 1970’s when the lightening
protection cable linking the pylons out of Fawley was replaced by a new
combined cable developed by BICC as one of the first experimental links to
use it.

GH