Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

In this thread, lots of people who've never heard of OPGW fiber...

https://www.aflglobal.com/Products/Fiber-Optic-Cable/Aerial/...

One of the problems with this new thing is that in the event of a fiber cut, restoration times will be VERY long.

For everybody who's saying "This will be great for fiber to the home!". Sorry, no. From an ISP perspective this is possibly useful for intercity fiber and medium to long haul DWDM applications. You're not going to be breaking in/out of it to add or drop circuits. It'll go point to point from electrical substation to electrical substation, at each end there will be something like a 10' cube shaped telecom equipment shelter with the optical line terminal equipment in it.

When the video mentioned a custom cable design to meet requirements, the first thing I looked for in the article was details on this:

> ...the resulting [cable] design uses G.657 200 micron fibers with a specially tailored aramid configuration and a high-strength, high-temperature, track-resistant polymer jacket to survive the requirements of this application within a small form factor.

...and the first thing that popped into my mind was a certain pain-in-the-ass-to-repair weapon subsystem which uses a certain HP/LF transmission line that also leverages a "specially tailored aramid configuration" inner jacket. Cool tech, but yikes if commercial ISPs embrace this without seriously considering sustainability implications.

200 micron fiber vs 250 for cladding diameter is extensively used in new ultra high strand count ribbon cables. The "aramid" part is just Kevlar jacketing which is also common in outside plant fiber. It sounds more exotic than it really is. Google spider ribbon fiber for some details.

The OPGW reference and your final paragraph are relevant for Transmission lines; the article implies that this robot is used on Medium Voltage Distribution lines, so not just substation to substation.

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