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I hate backhoes. We had 3 major cuts of our dark fiber from idiots with backhoes. One of them was only two miles away. We can ping down the fiber and know exactly where the cut is. We jumped in my car and hightailed it over there. The company hadn't called for a pre-dig survey. They paid through the nose for that mistake.

One of the little known, and VERY real benefits, of GPS is the mapping of utilities in 3 dimensions. This is an ongoing project. (GPS, formally NAVSTAR, was brought to you by the US Navy and DARPA.) Back in the 90s companies started changing the 'names' of telephone poles, actually utility poles, to their high precision GPS 3D location.

Since this was when we were still deliberately introducing a small, but known, error into GPS the utility companies were authorized special hand held units that had a one meter location accuracy. They would slap the unit up against the pole, let it settle, and record the location. The same applies to fire hydrants, sewer pumping stations, etc., etc., etc. From that it is easy for a computer to make very accurate 3D maps.

WWG1WGA

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

That’s right up my alley - dig-ins are not just a problem for communications wires and fiber - they seemingly love to dig into electric service conductors quite often, usually only affecting one house. But worse, they occasionally dig into a distribution line, which creates quite a costly repair, and does a bit of damage to their backhoe.

Call before you dig! It’s free. I called before simply digging a hole to put a 12 foot 4X4 into the ground near my service entrance behind my house. They came out and marked where the phone, cable, fiber, and electric lines were (gas is on the other side of the house). Thus, I was able to dig my 18” deep hole without fear of making contact with anything disruptive or dangerous.

While I have all kinds of appreciation for the capability of fiber optics, in part, from seeing the demo at the Corning Museum in NY decades ago, I am way less impressed with management.

The biggest cable, 24 conductor, in the country goes right by my place. When they put it in they said they were only going to use four: State, Fed, Mil. and utility. The rest were in reserve, presumably so maybe I could hook into one? Can I use it? No bleeping way. Can’t be done, they say. Extremely tricky and technical, they say. It’s right BY MY PLACE. I’d even fire up the trencher and dig my own hookup hole.

That was nearly two decades ago. A few months back a crew showed up to dig in a couple of new access boxes. Big concrete guys. I told the guys they were picking a bad spot since the highway shoulder at my place is extra wide and disabled vehicles pull over there often.

Did they pay attention to me? nnnoooowwwaaaay. Just a few weeks after they left we had a big rain storm. Buried the new boxes under half a foot of water so’s they had to re-fill the gravel and pump them out, the holes being in solid rock.

Then about a month later a passing honey truck blew an axle and drug itself right over said new boxes beating the snot out of them again. Not sure if there’s a karma monster involved because they’re so dam backward about letting us local folks use their little glass wire but in the mean time their maintenance fakter is impressive?

And I wasn’t even using my own backhoe when things went south.