Cables don't move often. Why not simply have a map of all of them?

Google sell maps of things like this from street view data.

▲ octoberfranklin an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Any one particular cable might not move often, but if a telco owns N bucket trucks it's a safe bet that about N cables move every workday.

Telcos are notoriously secretive about the location of their fiber. They even got most state legislatures to exempt it from state-level FOIA laws.

▲ HenrikB 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

OpenStreetMap supports annotating poles and theirs cables. It's common for power lines (local and long distance). There are also annotations for communication lines (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:communication%3Dline).

There are also public and proprietary "aviation obstacle" databases across the world.

▲ riotnrrd 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

All cables? Everywhere in the entire country? Accurate to the centimeter level and updated on the hour?

Edit: This was flippant, but the real issues are: any map you get will be incomplete and obsolete almost immediately and cables move and sway in the breeze.

▲ lazide 2 hours ago | parent [-]

It doesn’t need to be at the cm level. Giving them a 10m berth should be fine.

▲ anamexis 2 hours ago | parent [-]

A 10m berth from wires would exclude a substantial proportion of houses in my city.

▲ lazide 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Then they shouldn’t be flying in your city.

As is apparently becoming obvious.

▲ ejoso 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I can’t think of a major city I’ve been to on earth where 10M from a hung cable is realistic outside of some suburbs and rural areas.

	▲	throwaway2037 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		`> I can’t think of a major city I’ve been to on earth` Does Manhattan count? I am pretty sure south of 96th street has no above ground utilities.