Build it and we'll come

The tow truck was laden as it turned the corner: a silver Toyota anchored to its deck and a bright blue Mazda trailing off the back. Somehow, in the midst of a thunderstorm, it all went very wrong. The truck clipped a power pole, which broke at the base and fell between it and the trailing car and the whole lot ended in a mess of smashed windscreens and tangled cables in the middle of the road.

- RUSSELL BROWN

This caused a number of problems. Every other route in the vicinity was already either closed for a big stormwater separation dig or on stop-go signs for roadworks. Tempers flared as drivers made three-point turns in the rain. Vector soon logged an electrical outage. But the internet survived. The thin fibre-optic cables, pulled down with the pole, were all over the road but intact and continued to transmit their bits.

Fibre is much more resilient than the old copper lines," enthused my telecommunications commentator friend. "It bends, you can drown it, even in earthquakes it continues to work. Just incredible."

It couldn't last. The vehicles had to be removed and after two hours of operating through a crash scene the internet went with them. Still, my friend wasn't wrong. We'd grown used to internet that, unlike the old copper network that got iffy when it rained, never broke down.