Government and fibre deployment

When the government deploys fibre, there are three elements to consider:

1. Canalisation: Civil work is required to insert the fibre. Normally, the canalisation is built on the side of the roads. If you see a blue line on the side while driving on the motorway, there is a canalisation below the asphalt. In simple terms, it's a hole prepared to contain cables.
2. Caskets: A casket is a small deposit used to distribute or join optic fibre. They have a metallic cover at the top, which can be opened and it's easily accessible for maintenance. You have seen probably lots of these elements while walking on the street.
3. Optic cable: The cable itself, where data travels from one point to another. An optic cable has typically between 16 and 3456 fibres (typically 144), and they can be as long as 4 km.

Let's assume that the government wants to connect municipalities A and B. Before starting the construction, the first step is to study if the direct path between A and B is feasible or not. This phase is called the study order. Commonly, the government has difficulties at this point mainly because of two things:

1. Terrain difficulties
2. Road holders

Every road holder needs to authorise the works. Well, some road holders are easy to work with than others. If a road holder refuses the fibre optical deployment, the government needs to be more patient, or find another path to deploy the fibre. 😅

If the route to building a new path to deploy fibre is feasible and there aren't any bureaucratic impediments, then the government publishes the requirements and the budget to build fibre from A to B. At this point, private contractors can submit to a contest and, usually, the more affordable one wins the contract.

All this process should be deployed physically and inventoried virtually. I'm contributing to the virtual part, the next day I'll tell you more about it.