Looks like they're burying it. The buried stuff does have a small copper locate wire. Or maybe its aluminum? I don't know. Better check

They specifically lay fiber in rural areas, cuz it’s federally subsidized

Thieves don't care if it's a nice neighborhood. It happens on building sites everywhere. They don't mind driving a long way.

Even when it's fully installed, people will try to steal the copper cables. In the power industry it's a real problem with people removing the earthing, not always noticeable right away, but then it's not safe to work on anymore.

It's a really common thing in construction yards.

Here in Germany, they're literally stealing the overhead lines off of the train tracks.

At one of my prior jobs (Chicos FAS,Ft Myers, FL) a maintenance guy got fired when they caught him stealing cables for copper about 10 years ago.

The entire continent of africa

Copper spools have the sheathing stripped off, wire cut to reasonable lengths, then brought to multiple recyclers in stages.

To be sure, the odd idiot will show up with a unadulterated spool and try to get paid, but most that go to the effort of abducting these things off the side of the road aren't entirely stupid.

Then again, a less scrupulous yard might still buy the spool as it comes and strip it themselves.

That's exactly what a copper thief would say.

Some people were about to buy a house then on the day of closing, they inspect the house one last time and found all the copper pipes missing lol

So they had to re-negotiate about the purchase price

Copper-nabbers are opportunistic, and won’t take the time to forge an original invoice.

I dunno, it's kind of hard to spell "Ea-nāṣir" correctly.

…have you ever been to Detroit? Because that is not what Detroit looks like lol

Yeah, but you wouldn't find a buyer

Yeah , but you won't find a buyer , the thing with copper and metals is you can easily sell them off in most cases.

No, check ebay if you don't believe me. It's not exactly plentiful, but there are enough contractors with several hundred/thousand feet left over from big jobs who are selling it for wholesale or less. It's not like you can recycle it, and splicing is unreliable without tools that cost as much as a car, so if you've got a partial spool you need to get rid of you'll probably have to sell it at a loss.

yeah but no buyer

Putting my geoguessr to the test-
For sure US, Pine trees, wood fences, trailers, political sign- David Hogan? cant make it out, not St Augustine grass-maybe paspalum?, Barn/stable implies horses or cows maybe.

Im guessing north-central Florida/south Georgia. Sticking the pin somewhere close to Taylor Florida or right on the border of GA.
Sorry, im not trying to dox just having some fun. :P

Fiber optic cable is just glass or nylon, sealed with a thermoplastic. It really is one of the cheapest kinds of cables to make, maybe ever. It's really not worth anything when anyone who needs to run fiber can just buy a brand new spool for the same price as a spool from four guys in a shitty pickup truck who can't describe why they even had it to begin with.

Who would you sell it to? The same telecom company? The same company that installs it? Might as well steal the tires off the installation team truck and sell it back to them.

Sell it to who? Most business must keep records of the stuff they use in their books. A roll of optic fiber this large would cost a substantial amount of money, so using one "off the books" would require some creativity. And I'm not sure there's much use for individuals for that much.

Copper is interesting because there are business that buys it by weight for recycling purposes.

It's really that valuable, the bulk prices I've found on Alibaba are around $25-$30 per KILOMETER!

In some localities fibre optic is strung on the power lines, yes.

In some it is buried.

All you're looking at is the outer protective sheath.

If the right people don't think it's just fiber, then it's no longer good enough.

TOSLINK