Without wishing to blow my own country's trumpet, one of the few things right about the UK (and to a great extent Europe's) telecommunications carrier market is sensible telcos dig proper ducts, put sensible fiber in them, bury them at sensible depths, and in general only provision SDH (read SONET in the US). And *seem* to keep maps.
We have a very comprehensive map of the ducting that is laid. And another layer that covers fibre which extends into buildings, which is a very impressive system. You can look at a building like Telehouse and find the fibre paths very quickly. It can plot routes based upon specified optical power budgets and redundancy requirements, and generate a works list for joins etc if a new ring is being built. Regards, Neil. -- Neil J. McRae - Alive and Kicking. neil@DOMINO.ORG