Fiber optics take the pulse of the planet
knowablemagazine.org
knowablemagazine.org
Also mini rant:
> ... strips a cable of its protective sheath, exposing a glass core thinner than a hair — a fragile, 4-kilometer-long fiber that’s about to be fused to another. It’s a fiddly task better suited to a lab ...
This sort of pointless made up filler writing always annoys me. Fiber splicing is done by thousands of technicians in the field every day, sure some of it in nicer weather but this is nothing extraordinary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zN20ZVInfU
A friend lives in a rural area served by a cooperative not unlike this one, and he's got symmetric gigabit fiber. I'm in Charlotte and can't get AT&T or Google interested in lighting up my neighborhood...
Probably should have had a fire extinguisher handy for this extreme science and engineering happening right next to me.
Apparently, they finished the job and only then realised that they’d run the fibre in one side of the van and out the back. Easy decision - they cut a panel off the van and preserved the fibre.