As to railroad right-of-ways, they will only let you within 30 feet of the tracks, which is still in the ror. It is safer than anywhere else because of the difficulty of getting permits to dig in railroad ror (5+ years here in Washington) even for other utilities. Some idiot with a backhoe can still be way of target though and get you. Derailments and floods are also big problems in rr-ror. The only real protection you have is ringed SONET, however, even in that arrangment some carriers do not have the ability to reroute everything, just the priority stuff. So they'll still have outages. It's all a matter of capacity and what electronics they use. <lurking mode off> Previously, the telephony industry has had a surplus of fiber. But since the Internet has taken off, much of that excess has been taken by dedicated Internet customers, and expanding POP sites. Now, many facilities-based carriers are having to lay new fiber to meet the unending demand. Perhaps the fiber cuts we are seeing are more often related to construction of this new fiber, and not freak accidents (farmer joe and his shovel). If so, then no matter where you run the fiber, if it sits next to existing fiber run, you run the risk of new construction accidents. In effect, the backhoe in the above example will be "targeting" the fiber already in the ground. -Brian brian@mail.usld.net @USLD Internet Services The views come from me and are mine, not USLD's. <lurking mode on>