Your city office building may be only
one kilometre or a mere 10 metres from the nearest end of laid
optical-fiber cable, but it might as well be one thousand kilometres.
The prospect of upheaval caused by the street excavations required to
complete the optical-fiber circuit is too great for most city officials
to tolerate. So in many municipalities, what[base ']s known in the industry as
[base "]the last mile[per thou] remains unbridged.
The innovative process of either robotically laying optical-fiber cable
in existing underground utility pipes or including it as part of the
relining of these pipes offers a way to complete the circuit without
destroying city streets. But standards are essential to assure telecom
and utility companies that public safety will be preserved, and that[base ']s
where
a new ASTM
technical committee comes in[~]as a place where telecom companies and
others will pull together their expertise to serve the optical fiber in
underground utilities industry.
