And this is why I still don't understand our reliance on poles.
We already dig in our sewer and water. At any time in the last hundred years we could have run similar conduits for power and comms.
Would that be a panacea? Of course not. But, it would harden all that infrastructure against so many common threats. Especially in cities, it just doesn't make sense to me.
It's because you have to spend money to save money.
Intellectually, broadband companies agree that it's stupid
to have "redundant" lines running through the
same conduit
because one errant swipe by a backhoe digging a shallow grave,
and all the parallel links are gone.
It's possible that for some media the more cost-effective approach
is to overbuild the system by adding redundant links over new paths -
even if they're using the less reliable above-ground media.
Then one tree falling will only kill service between sites with no redundant connections -
probably just the Last Mile. Meanwhile the money has been invested in
redundancy and throughput rather than digging ditches to avoid ghost trees.
Another possibility is to only bury the fiber between pairs of poles
after it's taken out by a tree.
This is the same policy used around Knoxville to keep cars from hitting utility poles:
Every time a car hits a pole, they move it further away from the road.
A few poles even get moved 2-3 times.
But they only spend money on the poles in demonstrably risky spots,
and they don't spend money moving poles that have never been hit,
and may never be hit.