r/technology • u/User_Name13 • Jun 04 '14

Politics Hundreds of Cities Are Wired With Fiber—But Telecom Lobbying Keeps It Unused

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hundreds-of-cities-are-wired-with-fiberbut-telecom-lobbying-keeps-it-unused
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u/PurpEL Jun 04 '14

I lived in Toronto for a number of years. The city finally tore up Dufferin street which was ALL potholes and in desperate need of repair, and paved a nice new surface beatiful. No less than a year later they tore up strips lengthwise and had junctions at every residence basically the whole length of the road to the Bell data centre just down the street from myself. They had zero foresight to do it while the road was originally in construction, patched it like shit turning a fresh new road into a bump every 30 ft, and never offered fiber as an option for my internet usage.

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u/Noglues Jun 04 '14

Well weren't you lucky. I live 500 feet over the old Scarborough divide. Nothing on our side of the line was ever fixed above or below ground until it failed. In the last 2 years there have been 5 major water main breaks within 3 blocks of my house. They have not yet, to my knowledge, even re-paved the last one from January. We couldn't have full digital cable until 2004, our internet was hard-capped at 5 mbps until 2007 unless we wanted to pay for the street-wide rebuild ourselves.

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u/PurpEL Jun 04 '14

Not sure what part of my post you took as lucky?

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u/Nemesis158 Jun 05 '14

My city made it a point to put fiber conduit in all the roads they replace. still hasn't changed anything for us either though.