On: Amazon faces FAA probe after delivery drone snaps internet cable in Texas

[londons_explore]

Cables don't move often. Why not simply have a map of all of them?

Google sell maps of things like this from street view data.

[octoberfranklin → londons_explore]

Any one particular cable might not move often, but if a telco owns N bucket trucks it's a safe bet that about N cables move every workday.

Telcos are notoriously secretive about the location of their fiber. They even got most state legislatures to exempt it from state-level FOIA laws.

[c22 → octoberfranklin]

If you have a map of all utility poles you could probably just avoid every straight line between any of them within some reasonable distance of eachother.

[octoberfranklin → c22]

Most "utility pole maps" only show poles with power lines on them.

A ton of telco cables are on telco-only poles (basically just a really straight tree trunk shoved in the ground, no cross-arms at all).

[euroderf → c22]

OpenPoleMap is achievable. Just don't expect local governments to subsidise the mapping of obstacles to drones of the likes of Amazon.

[drjasonharrison → c22]

it's an approximation of dangerous areas, catenary curves are more accurate than straight lines but you don't know the length of the cable so you don't know the droop height.

[HenrikB → londons_explore]

OpenStreetMap supports annotating poles and theirs cables. It's common for power lines (local and long distance). There are also annotations for communication lines (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:communication%3Dline).

There are also public and proprietary "aviation obstacle" databases across the world.

[riotnrrd → londons_explore]

All cables? Everywhere in the entire country? Accurate to the centimeter level and updated on the hour?

Edit: This was flippant, but the real issues are: any map you get will be incomplete and obsolete almost immediately and cables move and sway in the breeze.

[lazide → riotnrrd]

It doesn’t need to be at the cm level. Giving them a 10m berth should be fine.

[anamexis → lazide]

A 10m berth from wires would exclude a substantial proportion of houses in my city.

[lazide → anamexis]

Then they shouldn’t be flying in your city.

As is apparently becoming obvious.

[ejoso → lazide]

I can’t think of a major city I’ve been to on earth where 10M from a hung cable is realistic outside of some suburbs and rural areas.

[throwaway2037 → ejoso]

    > I can’t think of a major city I’ve been to on earth

Does Manhattan count? I am pretty sure south of 96th street has no above ground utilities.