Broadband cables to be routed through water pipes in new trial
You can trial this all you want it will never be deployed at scale. No water company is going to risk leaching of substances into their carefully laid and coated pipes, water systems are large, complex mechanical systems with parts from very different eras and using these as conduit for anything other than liquids is not nearly as easy as it might seem, there are all kinds of mechanical components in the flow that you have little visibility on (various different kinds of valves including ball valves that you could for this purpose rename &#x27;shears&#x27;), baffles, joints, pumps etc.<p>In short: this is an idea that should be discarded before you spend money on the trials because in practice it won&#x27;t work, and that&#x27;s before you get into the interruptions every time you want to open up a line for a cable upgrade, the problems involved in fixing anything inside a conduit carrying water under pressure, the inability to enter and exit the conduit at random spots and the various obstacles (seams, older welded joints, socks) that you&#x27;ll encounter that will make inserting a continuous run of a cable through a water system already in place that wasn&#x27;t designed very explicitly for that purpose.