Five state agencies ink agreement to bring overhead utility cables underground

[gandalf12]

A lot of Thai people will die because of this,you can see a cable overhead but what will happen when they are hidden?

I hope the people in charge will realize a safety campaign telling the people not to dig without locating the cable first.

If underground installation is carried out correctly there wont be a problem but we all know it wont be. What the eye doesn't see the contractor can get away with murder and the so called inspectors don't have a clue anyway.

[gandalf12]

It wont happen. Lots of talk and promises but little action. Like the statement that 130,000 Wi-Fi points are to be installed in the next year. That requires 12,000 a month and that is not going to happen. If it does expect to see pigs flying.

[ThaiTony2]

Common in Thailand.

There is no way that all places within Thailand with this problem will change to underground cable systems in our lifetime. Even knowing that one of the other problems with all these wires is that there are always fires starting as a result.

[KenKadz]

The planning and preparation alone is a monumental task that will, if done properly, take years.

In the mean time utilities and customers will be adding wires to the current spaghetti situation.

An underground system is more expensive and time consuming to maintain and repair.

Wait! What I did not read is just how much spaghetti will be hidden underground?

[bangon04]

So let's get this straight. Bill Gates observed (not criticised) that there were a lot of hanging cables around Thailand. Anyone with half-a-brain agreed with him. Anyone who lives with their head up their ar** said he should mind his own business.

Now the government has said it will sort all this out. Whether they will or not will have to be seen. But the lesson here to be learnt is - calling a spade a spade or constructive criticism is good for any society. Burying your head in the sand doesn't change anything; in fact, it just makes the problem worse.

Just very sad it had to take one rich and powerful man to bring it into discussion. A foreign one, too.

Maybe we could have a new subforum:

"Thai Officials / Police / Government finally decide to act / fix ******* / take case seriously after worldwide / nationwide / online negative publicity."

[fforest1]

Its funny 2 or 3 days after Bill made his comment 1.5 Billion dollars suddenly

appears out of nowhere and they are ready to start digging after putting it off

for 30 years...Thats just weird...

Who is paying for this?

Every one who uses internet,cable,electric will be paying higher bills,thats

who...

But like others have said this will be a word class disaster when the city

floods..The Thais are pathetic when it comes to regular maintenance which

will be required here....

Edited July 1, 2016 by fforest1

[ozyjon]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9DiWc0gLWQ

[Dancin Dna 11]

Taking out the cables that are no longer required might be a good start.

[GAZZPA]

I've just invited Warren Buffet to come over and observe the lack of road safety, Mark Zuckerberg to make an observation about the corruption and Roman Abramovich to make an observation about the complicated visa process.

Next month Richard Branson to comment on the cost of imported cars.

That should sort things out.

[williamgeorgeallen]

So let's get this straight. Bill Gates observed (not criticised) that there were a lot of hanging cables around Thailand. Anyone with half-a-brain agreed with him. Anyone who lives with their head up their ar** said he should mind his own business.

Now the government has said it will sort all this out. Whether they will or not will have to be seen. But the lesson here to be learnt is - calling a spade a spade or constructive criticism is good for any society. Burying your head in the sand doesn't change anything; in fact, it just makes the problem worse.

Just very sad it had to take one rich and powerful man to bring it into discussion. A foreign one, too.

Maybe we could have a new subforum:

"Thai Officials / Police / Government finally decide to act / fix ******* / take case seriously after worldwide / nationwide / online negative publicity."

dont think anyone here believes this is going to get fixed, do they? this is about making some noise, making some (long term) plans (hopefully forgotten soon) distributing some funds (in a way difficult to trace) and getting the problem out of the spot light. bill gates is just too powerfull to go after for damaging thailands image.

[Thian]

It wont happen. Lots of talk and promises but little action. Like the statement that 130,000 Wi-Fi points are to be installed in the next year. That requires 12,000 a month and that is not going to happen. If it does expect to see pigs flying.

In Europe my house got a new cablemodem which has a wifi system for other customers from the same cablecompany as well.

So all customers of this company (they have millions of them) can use eachothers routers now so we have wifi all over the country where there is a cablemodem.

They just sent all their customers new modems with that free wifi transmitter and you couldn't refuse it. They just disconnected the old modems so you had to ask for a new one or have no internet at all.

If they do the same in BKK there can be wifi all over town in a few weeks time.

[attrayant]

A few years ago there were stories about how Thailand was going to switch to driving on the right side of the road. This underground cable idea seems even more improbable.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/630001-thailand-to-change-from-left-to-right-hand-driving/

BANGKOK: -- The Thai government is proposing a change from driving on the left side of the road to driving on the right side of the road, the department of public roads has announced. The proposal will be send to parliament in June and the law will take affect on 1 January 2014, with the turning of the year.

[snip]

As of 1 January 2014 all cars sold in Thailand will need to have the steering wheel on the left side. Old normal cars can keep their steering wheel on the right, but owners cannot sell these cars. For that the car must first be refitted with the steering wheel on the left.

The telecoms should invest in higher capacity trunks and use subscriber line carriers, so they only have to run a few heavy cables along the street instead of the spaghetti that's there now.

Better yet - get rid of landlines all together. Don't most people use mobile phones anyway? If anyone really needs a land line, get a VoIP phone and service package from their internet provider.

[Moonmoon]

be prepared for super heavy traffic jams over this 10 years as they dig underground. i just saw my area being named. i know its supposed to be a good thing but seen too many projects with poor planning.

[nakhonandy]

Nice thought but it will not work here.

People mention The Netherlands etc where this is common.

True but their Cities don't flood all the time.

On a purely engineering level and delivering Quality of Service this would be a nightmare.

Just clean up and upgrade what is there! That would probably take several years anyhow.

No but many of our cities are below sea leven and ground water levels are real high so some of these cables are exposed to water a lot.

So its quite possible but expensive and harder to maintain.

I agree with what you say about The Netherlands, I lived there for years.

However the cables are not under the water table so not exposed all the time. Plus the Netherlands having effective water management rarely floods.

Also the engineering competency is considerably higher.

Here flooding is a yearly event(s) all over the country.

It would make more sense to sort out the existing cabling first as a large proportion of the spaghetti isn't even used or is superfluous. Having solved that issue and assuming the water management is also sorted it would then be worthwhile to look at the underground option.

Of course Thailand is capable of doing this but it should be tackled methodically.

[fforest1]

Were talking a disaster off biblical proportions when Bangkok floods and all

those cables are submerged in water underground...

All that toasted electronics will take ages to repair....

[DrTuner]

Nice, a decade of traffic jams due to Burmese workers shoveling through the tarmac coming right up.

[khundon]

I bet a pound to a pinch of sh1T, they won't have sorted the cables and wires out in the op picture within 10 years, let alone all cabling in BKK.

Yeah, right, put them underground and let them go up in smoke when it floods.

Such forward looking planning, I don't know how they do it!

[Kru Baa]

One night the power went out at my place, which surprisingly rarely happens in Pattaya, the next morning I was on my way to work and saw a pile of burnt wires beneath a pole with about three or four birds molten into the plastic.