someone from the local gas company told me that the reason the utilites don't work together is that they can't because of rules - electric and gas need to be kept separate for safety, and the surrounding soil means water leaks can be absorbed away from other utilities' pipework. I didn't dig any deeper
I feel there's a generation of Brits burned the wave of random telecoms companies digging up major roads for years for cable, only for the results to be pretty much useless by the time it's done as ADSL and existing POTS lines could do pretty much the same thing without any more digging.
The words "Diamond Cable" still fill me with dread to this day. They dug up half our village to then offer no service.
A local fibre co here in York dug a cable to all the way my parent’s farm house, about 250m outside the nearest village (and probably even further into the village to reach the PCP), then left the cable coiled up on the outside of their property and haven’t done anything further with it in over a year.
I’ve heard other similar stories from friends in the city too.
It’s almost like there’s money for the infrastructure but not for the staff required to actually run it as a service…
Where as in London, where there is at least one house every 8 meters, they were in and out of my street in two days and now we have constant door to door sales people offering deals.
Smells like they "installed" fibre in York to meet a contract/regulation but they really focus on Urban density. Makes sense for them but not for the rest of us.
Like most things that's half true.
It's true you don't want a telecom worker laying a gas pipe, however you can coordinate this stuff if you want to. Typically the deepest utility works first then backfills just to the level of the next utility and so forth. However timing is critical, the second utility must be ready to work as soon as the first is done and so on.
The biggest reasons they don't is mostly (in this order)
-They can't time their work to be at the same time as 3 other utilities.
-They can't work out cost and liability sharing, if the last utility to work does the reinstatement and takes liability for it then the telecom company will always pay while electric typically won't pay anything as it's in the middle. The legal demarcation between utilities is also much less clearly defined.
-Contractors typically do all work, not actual utilities and it's in their best interests to dig the road up five times (one for each utility) rather than just once. The same goes for everyone else who gets paid when the road is opened; including, often, the local government (for permits).