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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

> compared to even the shoddiest-run of national electricity grids

Who do you think runs connectivity for your average electrical grid outside of the power cables themselves?

There are superposition modems but those assume that the lines themselves aren't damaged so there usually is a whole SCADA system on either a private cellular network or through fiber or copper (depending on age) owned by the telcos.

FWIW during the massive blackout in the early 00's in North America and Canada the telco system held up remarkably well (until the fuel ran out in some places).

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> Who do you think runs connectivity for your average electrical grid outside of the power cables themselves?

The grid run their own lines. Underground power cables are always accompanied by a pilot cable, which used to be 2x current loops plus a bunch of twisted pairs, now fiber optic. Underground power cables are almost always run in pairs (pairs of 3 phases) so between every significant substation there's always at least 2 dedicated communication lines.

You have said 'owned by the telcos' and this is very much not my experience. The grid comms network is owned and maintained by the grid.

This.

More often than not long-haul fiber within a single metro area is owned by the electrical providers, and the telcos lease strands from them. Telcos will lease fiber from power companies but rarely the other way around.

The intercity stuff often belongs to power companies too, if it's within their service footprint. The Bonneville Power Administration owns most of the long-haul fiber in Washington, Oregon, and western Idaho.

Interesting! Where I live there are essentially three different providers for long haul SCADA, the railroad infra company, the telcos and the cable companies. And then there are some specialized fiber companies as well. Most power infra that I've seen up close did not include integral communications though I guess it makes sense.

But even the largest grid infra companies here rely on the telcos for their private comms, for instance:

https://nieuws.eneco.nl/stedin-en-liander-bundelen-krachten-...

Note the mention of "KPN" for this private mobile network that is nominally owned by the energy company grid operators but in fact is operated by KPN (the largest Dutch Telco) and uses their infra.

Which country are you in?

In AU, even for aerial powerlines, we run our own mix of fibre and radio comms between zone subs and stuff like ACR's... in fact I dont think any of the transmission or distribution operators utilise any telco stuff for their control networks

Overhead lines make great fiber bearers too... because people know to stay way away from them!

I have seen Lashing fibre to power conductors and it was a bad idea. The conductors sag when heavily loaded on hot days and the lashing digs in to the fibre jacket.

The fiber is integrated into the grounding conductor. OPGW.

The “fibre bearer” term that GP comment used does not imply OPGW

The Netherlands is definitely a special case when it comes to history of physical internet infrastructure; I wouldn't extrapolate from that.

https://nlnet.nl/foundation/history/

Fair enough.

> But even the largest grid infra companies here rely on the telcos for their private comms, for instance:

You should read that article again. It doesn't say what you've said it says.

It says "Utility Connect wordt ondersteund op het gebied van aanleg en operationeel beheer door Telecom- en ICT dienstverlener KPN" and that's pretty clear to me.

Creation and operational management will be supported by Telco and ICT service provider KPN.

I'd like to point out that the article is referring to a CDMA network used for distribution metering, not the backbone network of site interconnects, which is kinda what we're talking about, given that the subject is the Optus network outage where the outage was of their backbone network.

I's secondarily like to point out that 'supported by' can mean many things, including merely having the telco as a depot for replacement equipment and repair services, etc.

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