“You’ll need a
head for heights
if you’re going to
make your way
up the 100ft-tall
pylon, especially
if it’s in bad
weather”
specialist skill, which can take a
considerable amount of time to
train and qualify to undertake from
an engineer’s perspective - and
you’ll also need a head for heights
if you’re going to make your way
up the 100ft towers with the cable
- although 400kV pylons can reach
over 200m in the United Kingdom,
on the Thames Crossing.
The idea of attaching cable to
pylons was first conceived and
deployed in the UK and Japan in
the 1980s.
In the UK, the first installation
took place on a 33kV overhead
COMMUNICA | Issue Five
distribution line between sub-
stations at Hartley and Goudhurst
in Kent, UK in December 1982.
Today, engineers work with the
assistance of wrapping and
de-wrapping equipment, which
enables them to effectively deploy
an automated machine on the
earthed wire of the pylon which will
make its way between pylons to
wrap and unwrap fibre optic cable
around the wire - the first process
to achieve this was actually
featured on the discontinued BBC
television programme Tomorrow’s
World in 1985, when the
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