[BC] Fiber, watch out

[RichardBJohnson at comcast.net]

Are you sure it is Comcast? There was cable laid all up and down Routes I-495, I-395, and Routes I-95 in the Northeast. I checked the ownership because I wanted to know how they got permission to put the fiber onto a publicly-owned highway without a long, cumbersome, bidding process.

It turns out it was done by Northern Natural Gas, the largest interstate gas-pipeline in the US. They expect to lease it when it is complete. It turns out that in 1850, the Congress gave the "gas companies" the right to put gas pipes anywhere. This was in the days where a "coal-gas" company existed in every large city and the resulting "illuminating gas" was to be piped to the customers, sometimes even using wooden pipes.

Through the distortion of lawyering, this "right" by someone who calls themselves a gas company has been expanded to where people have found their gardens, lawns, and sometimes homes, destroyed by the gas companies installing 750 lb/sq/in pipe valve-heads and control buildings on their property without any formal process at all. They just do it. 

The gas company just showed up one day and started installing fiber in the interstate highway system. They did it because nobody could stop them. Apparently they will defend their right to install fiber as some modern equivalent of gas pipes.

Cheers,
Richard B. Johnson
Book: http://www.AbominableFirebug.com/

----- Original Message -----
From: jyrussell at academicplanet.com

I'd agree very much with Edwin on this - for many year every piece of  
fibre connecting the D/FW Metromess with points east was owned  
outright by Comcast.

the glass followed the I-30 corridor across Lake Ray Hubbard, and, no  
matter what cable company or DSL or other ISP you were working with,  
they eventually had to get on the glass owned by Comcast to get onto  
the D/FW server net.