The snakepits under our feet
I’m continuously fascinated by what hides in plain sight. Since I entered this business I’ve heard of a mythical tunnel under Rue de la Loi where new cables can be spliced or laid without having to open the street.
This week I found out that it actually exists. Take a look:
This is likely not meaningful too many, but what you see here, my friends, is the information superhighway. All players in Brussels coming together in harmony. Somewhat.
Let me explain. I found this open manhole on Rue de la Loi. It probably goes from there all the way to some of the big datacenters in Belgium.
It’s always impressive to me the amount of cables that connect us together. There are a ton of cables down there and each one of those cables probably carries a couple of tens of ducts, and those ducts, in turn, carry tens to hundreds of fiber strands. Those strands themselves might carry a single customer to maybe hundreds of customers. And at the end, those customers pull and push tons of cat gifs.
Now imagine that these are only a fraction of the users from a fraction of the city, yet, it’s massive.
Herding Cats
Can anyone open a manhole, enter it, and lay their own cables? As you might imagine, it’s not that simple. So, how do these players even get along? If, that is, they do they get along?
It surprises me how orderly it is. First, the telecom operators themselves have an association to share costs: the RNBB (Raad van de Netwerkbeheerders in Brussel) or CGRB (Conseil des Gestionnaires des Réseaux de Bruxelles). www.cgrb-rnbb.be
On top of that, there’s an association for the Brussels region to coordinate all construction sites. The system is called Osiris: http://osiris-public.irisnet.be/index.aspx?Language=nl
So, whenever an operator needs to open the sidewalk or even open a simple manhole, it needs to coordinate with the rest of the players by making their request in Osiris.
This being Belgium, there’s, of course, a separate system for Flanders and, unfortunately, no system for Wallonia.
