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Ariel vs. Sub terrestrial Cable Facility Outages
By qwcdirect | March 28, 2010
Speed-to-market, reliability, and lower installation cost is the battle cry for any telecommunications carrier in today’s competitive marketplace. Eight to 10 years ago, carriers were generally deterred from using aerial rights of way due to a lack of marketing by the utilities, shortcomings of the technology and Ma Bell’s tradition of burying cable. Despitethese issues, between 1988 and 1995, “upstart” carrier MCI decided to leverage the advantages of aerial solutions and worked closely with various electric utilities to install more than 2,400 route miles of aerial optical ground wire (OPT-GW).
Aerial construction can be as much as 40 percent less expensive than going the underground route. Also, aerial installation tends to be much quicker than sub terrestrial construction. The headaches caused by rocky soil and other geological surprises are eliminated, while other potentially troublesome issues such as erosion control, right-of-way cleanup and traffic control are greatly reduced. Ariel cables, however, pose the threat of electrocution during floods and storms.
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