[pyryt]

There's probably a good explanation, but let me ask the question: why do we need to have men cutting hard road surfaces?

If a city extends their subway network, they dont demolish all buildings on top, lay the tracks, and then rebuild. They do it without any major interference to the surface. Similarly for mountain tunnels, you dont start by demolishing a mile of rock. We just dig the tunnel.

Couldn't someone invent a robot to dig fibre tunnels? Then we wouldnt need to bother any shop owners or neighbours with noise and inconvenience?

[chrishacken]

How do you plan for these things to get into buildings? Sewer, water, and power utilities are anywhere from 20’ deep to 2’ deep, so unless you want these robots aimlessly digging into utilities, you still need to disturb the ground above. Subway tunnels are generally very deep... 40’+ And verrrrry expensive.

[jessaustin]

When Charter hooked up a building for me, they used a horizontal bore to get from their pedestal at the corner of the lot to the wall I wanted them to come in. I've also seen horizontal boring used to lay new fiber along a highway right-of-way, because they wanted to switch back and forth from one side of the highway to the other. You've probably seen these machines before. [0]

[0] https://www.ditchwitch.com/directional-drills

[agakshat]

I would guess it’s a matter of cost and how deep the tunnel needs to be dug.

[pyryt]

It could be. Otoh, if you were able to have less workers on the job, avoid having to repave entire streets, and avoid having to wait for 6 months to get started... youd think itd be worth it