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Robots set up fiber-optic routes through pipes
By Paul Davidson
USA TODAY
The high-stakes race among phone, cable and wireless giants to offer speedy Internet service has a new entrant that likes to play dirty.
CityNet Telecommunications aims to revolutionize the rollout of broadband services in cities by dispatching tiny robots to lay fiber-optic cables in sewer pipes.
This is no pipe dream. The Silver Spring, Md.-based start-up already has agreements to run the high-speed fiber cables to commercial and apartment buildings in Indianapolis, Albuquerque and Omaha.
It is in talks with 33 other cities, including Washington, Providence and St. Paul, Minn. The first installation in Albuquerque is to start in January.
"This could be huge," says Jonathan Askin of the Association of Local Telecommunications Services.
One of the biggest obstacles to the rollout of high-speed Internet and data services is that companies must tear up city streets to lay fiber-optic cables. That increases costs, sparks lengthy battles over rights-of-way and disrupts traffic.
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Other options, such as digital subscriber lines, which combine fiber with existing coaxial or copper lines, provide slower speeds than direct fiber lines. Wireless services sometimes encounter interference because buildings get in the way of signals.
By using sewer lines, CityNet gains access to the basement of every building without the need to rip up streets. That could cut the time and cost of fiber installation in half, industry officials say.
CityNet plans to install the fiber, then lease it to the phone and cable companies that will offer the high-speed service.
"The last-mile connection to the customer is a problem for us all over the world," says Frank Madonna, senior vice president of Global Crossing, which offers data services to big companies and is considering leasing fiber from CityNet. "This could make a big dent in it."
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CityNet chief Robert Berger, 46, a sewer authority commissioner and former phone industry lawyer, realized last year that sewer lines could moonlight as conduits for fiber. ''I asked myself, 'What is the ubiquitous infrastructure underneath every city that gets you into every building basement?' '' Berger says. Water pipes would not work because they are pressurized and could pose health risks, he says.
Coincidentally, a Swiss company, Ka-Te Holding, was building robots to carry out a fiber-via-sewer strategy in Hamburg, Germany, and Vienna, where pilot projects have started.
Berger snared $100 million in venture funding and bought 53 robotic systems from Kate at $750,000 each. How they work:
· Workers lower a 6-inch-wide, 36-inch-long cylindrical robot down a manhole into the sewer pipe. A nearby technician remotely controls the robot.
· Waddling on a small set of wheels, the robot installs steel rings around the inside of the pipe every few feet. It then drags three steel conduits - casing that houses the fiber and shields it from the sewage - through the pipe and attaches them to the rings.
· Machines propel fiber through the conduits with air pressure.
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