100Mbps broadband comes to Scotland through the sewers

Davey Winder
Saturday, 21 June 2008 03:40

Business IT - Technology

Upgrading broadband network infrastructure is fraught with problems: surface disruption to traffic, huge cost implications and ever lengthening time scales. The answer, it seems, could be to deliver the Internet using city sewer systems.

In the UK, telecommunications industry watchdog Ofcom has announced that it is to investigate ways that fibre to the door connectivity can be rolled out more quickly. At the heart of this investigation will be the use of existing utility infrastructures such as the sewers.

One company delivering on the alternative infrastructure promise is H20 Networks . It has just announced that it will be giving the Scottish city of Dundee a £30 million (AUS $62 million) broadband face lift, courtesy of a sewer based fibre optic network. The 100Mbps broadband delivery system will make full use of existing sewage pipes to keep costs down and speed up completion of the project.

Of course, this isn't really a new technology. I seem to recall that at the height of the dotcom boom in the 90's there was broadband cable being laid in sewers and other related structures in major metro conurbations in the US. Indeed, the appeal of sewers for Internet delivery infrastructure remains as great as ever.

Even within the UK, H20 will not be the first to use the sewers for optical fibre networking. Geo has already successfully laid some 80km of cable underneath London, making it the only sewer-based fibre network in the capital.

Sewers make much more sense than you might at first imagine when it comes to laying broadband fibre. For a start the design of sewers such as those running underneath London, built during Victorian times, means there is a lot of headroom for engineers to work in. The relatively high ceilings also work in favour of keeping the cables out of the sewage, and away from rats for example.

Because there is little disruption thanks to no requirement to dig up the streets, both the public and the local transit authorities are kept happy. The speed and efficiency of the installation process also means that costs can be kept down, and cheaper infrastructure costs means cheaper end user deals.