Broadband Revolution Wreaks Havoc On Front Ends

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April 13, 2000 (11:12 AM EDT)

Broadband Revolution Wreaks Havoc On Front Ends

By Mary Mosquera,

One of the usually overlooked net effects of delivering high-speed Internet access is the offline wear and tear on drivers and their cars.

In fact, auto repair shops are likely benefitting big from the broadband explosion as streets are torn up to wire locations where there is a concentration of Internet users. Innovation is causing untold damage to axles and undercarriages.

Washington, D.C., has been called the nation's most wired metropolitan area, buttressed by high-tech corridors in its Northern Virginia and Maryland suburbs.

Eleven telecommunications and cable companies have permits to dig trenches for fiber-optic cable along some of D.C.'s busiest streets. High-speed lines are de rigueur at work and increasingly at home. Meanwhile, many companies are laying lines or upgrading existing ones to feed that demand.

Workers in the Nation's Capital may swear by their high-speed lines at work, but swear at them if they commute by car. The trench building, uneven pavement, traffic cones, and metal plates have wreaked such havoc on traffic and car frames that Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams put a moratorium on all street construction for two weeks and extended it for another two weeks through April 24. "We can't have this digging in a helter-skelter, ad hoc fashion," Williams said.

The problem is that each company rips open a trench, lays line, covers it up, and awaits city services to patch the strip. Then another company comes along to do the same thing. It can cost up to $100,000 a mile to lay cable, companies say, the vast majority of it going to the roadwork. The D.C. government, like many others around the nation, did not require coordination. This type of technological advance and competition is only a recent situation.

Now, D.C. requires that companies laying cable file their construction plans every six months for the next two years to plan some coordination and combine their cable-laying activities. Once the ban is lifted, they must do a lot of their road construction at night.

Among the companies digging up D.C. streets and laying cable are Williams Communications (stock: WCG), Qwest ,(stock: Q), Level 3 Communications (stock: LVLT), AT&T (stock: T), and Washington, D.C. area-based companies MCI WorldCom (stock: WCOM), Nextlink Communications (stock: NXLK), and Starpower Communications.

While the road-construction freeze is in place, springtime crowds are descending on the Nation's Capital.

On Wednesday, thousands of union members rallied at the Capitol against permanent normal trading relations with China. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue just beyond the White House, activists protested the policies of the International Monetary Fund/World Bank at their annual meetings. In between, were hordes of tourists and class trips that fill up Washington, D.C. landmarks each spring. And of course, there was the annual pilgrimage to Capitol Hill by members of professional organizations and special-interest groups lobbying their lawmakers for specific legislation.

However, this surreal picture of the convergence of government regulation, free speech, and innovation is offset somewhat by Washington, D.C.'s annual spring bloom blast of cherry blossoms, dogwoods, tulips, daffodils, and azaleas.