Intelligent neighbourhoods, see no wires?

Our bodies have lungs to put much needed oxygen into our blood, and our blood carries energy that enables our muscles to work. Most importantly as we're humans, our brain and nerves give us intelligence with which to process information! In similar ways electricity and water provide our households with survival basics like oxygen and food, although in the 21st century - in the information age - it is telecommunications has become the way to provide our households with intelligence using the internet.

We're used to getting water and electricity - from our municipality - in the best possible ways. On the other hand, our 'intelligence' comes from various forms of antennas and cables that keep on changing, especially over the past decade these technologies have been constantly changing. Much of the legacy cabling is being replace as we read this, with fibre optic glass cables. This represents a real way to truly improve our 'intelligence'. And I'm not speaking about changing from a broadcast model where others decide what we watch to an interactive model where we decide what we watch, I'm talking about access to the world information within milliseconds!

As a reminder for those of you whom were not around a hundred years ago, the situation was a lot worse than it is now. Poles carried thousands of wires, and wires were all carried above the ground. This is but one example of one city...

Over the years these cables have been shoved underground so as to make our world more beautiful and less cluttered.

On the top part of Ave Le Seuer in Fresnaye one can see how the council has moved the electricity cables underground. This enhances the views and apparently the prices of property too:

If we look at the top part of Ave Le Croix we see under Lions Head, similar beautification efforts by the city council to remove overhead cables and have electricity and all other service cables placed underground.

Although, below a certain point (Ave St Charles), Ave La Croix still have overhead cables (note: the photos don't show the detail although being there is a sight).

For the residents of Ward54 in Fresnaye and Bantry Bay, many have noticed that there are new cables being strung on old poles and even on electrical poles owned by the City of Cable Town. The irony is that the City have been working for over a decade on moving the electrical cables underground, other telecommunications companies would not even dream of obscuring views with poles and cables, yet Telkom seems to believe that their grandfather rights allows them to put new fibre optic cables onto very old falling over poles.

As can be seen on Avenue Brittany and below, Telkom are making new investments by stringing fibre on top of poles right where the City are moving electrical wires underground. We hope this is just bad planning, although we are concerned about others following Telkoms lead...

On the other hand we are confident that as soon as the City puts these final cables under the ground, so will Telkom.