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Comment by g_p | Hacker News Reader

I've seen something not too far from this done in rural areas in the UK. It's not illegal - in fact, it receives public money via broadband vouchers!

Direct-burying of fibre in the countryside is cheap, doesn't require permission (beyond getting access to the land etc.) Landowners are generally hugely supportive, as they get better internet too (and being rural, have useless connectivity to begin with).

You can get street works permits fairly easily, for the "last half-mile", through access to "code powers" [1]. That also helps you bypass certain planning rules. And you can just do a regular premises installation - nothing cloak and dagger here!

[1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/inform...

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In Nebraska we could direct-bury fiber up to eight feet underground with what was essentially a vibrating knife (pulled through the earth by two large Caterpillers) along the gravel paved county roads that were established when the railroads sold off land to finance their grade/track construction. It's incredibly cheap compared to any other means of installation and the right-of-ways are consistently available - https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vibration+cable+plough&t=ffab&iar=....

A tiny fraction of our fiber was mounted above ground (eight miles out of over 700 IIRC) but it was taken down by tornados/wind shear twice in the first three years after it was lit.

Here in Iowa, I see these "Ditch Witch" things [1] everywhere they do utility work. Seems like they can do pretty quick work with them.

[1] https://www.ditchwitch.com/directional-drills

Those will go through much tougher ground than a vibrating plough, but they're also much slower and you can see the trench when it's done. With the plough, we'd typically go through the gravel berm along the road and you'd have a hard time telling that it had just buried the cable even if you were looking for it!

See also “micro-trenching” https://www.google.com/search?q=%E2%80%9Cmicro-trenching%E2%...

Our fiber ISP, Ting, used those in our neighborhood to lay new lines. It was interesting to watch. For the most part, the only place where you could see any disturbance was when they had to pop up for a junction box.

Generally looking at around $200,000 for one of those. They work great in certain areas. If you’re doing urban work like we are they’re not so great because there’s a utility every 10 feet.

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