I have absolutely no doubt that with some funky signal processing you can do all sorts of things.
I can’t tell if this ever became a reality; I know of more modern approaches attempting to use thermal and multi spectral imaging to achieve the same goal.
Repairing becomes a different kind of nightmare.
Local municipalities establish de-facto monopolies and drive prices up, because they offer slightly faster and stable lines.
There is a joint effort by local utility companies in Mecklenburg and they’re trying to make things better, but anecdotally are also challenging to deal with.
My now residence here in the UK is not really rural and for years Giganet/CityFibre/toob promised gigabit soonTM for years and the date got delayed and delayed and delayed.
There is a common case of excessive bureaucracy and extremely conservative population (thank you, low birth rates) which is hindering any significant development in the country.
Most folks in Europe climb only sport routes, or then do some variant of proper alpinism once on wild unsecured terrain.
Downside is: a drunk guy in a truck is all you need to tear it down, not to mention natural disaster influence. And it's unsightly AF.
Yes, it's fast and cheap. That's how we got the situation that a backwater village in the midst of the "anus mundi" of Romania has XGPON for a few dozen euros a month, while you're lucky to get anything above 50M VDSL in Germany outside of large urban areas and 200M VDSL in urban areas.
But holy hell it's an eyesore to be in said village in Romania, look out the window and look at a bunch of fiber strung not even from a proper pole but from a tree. Takes the German expression "Kabelbaum" to a whole new level.
There is a whole field dedicated to this, called non-destructive testing. Modal response (i.e., monitor how a structure vibrates in response to an excitation) is a basic technique that features in multiple areas such as structural health monitoring and service life estimations.
Some mechanics also do this by placing the tip of a screwdriver against a point in an engine and place their ear against the screwdriver's handle. If it's not sounding right, the engine has problems.
Even pottery. You should hear the sound of a pot after you tap it. If it's muffled then odds are it has internal cracks.
The bigger issue over the last 5 years in the area where my company operates is the number of dump trucks that leave the bed up. Given the weight of dump truck it is easy for them to pull down multiple poles when they catch the cables, although perhaps they are drunk drivers...
If we had gotten our heads out of the sand on pushing CT scans as the answer, years ago we might have progressed further on other tech too.
E.g., photons: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-06-scientists-entire-hum...
We have people working around low-flying aircraft all the time. I’m guessing the associated job risks are better.
When you take those jobs, it’s because you want to make money, not because your life is at risk, there’s information asymmetry between you and the medical provider who is indirectly rewarded for billing for scans, and the overarching medical system prioritized CT scans over MRIs while our engineering culture failed to establish something safer and cheaper.
Would you play Russian Roulette with a revolver with 500 chambers and 1 bullet? What if by doing so a hospital would receive thousands of dollars, and would go on to be paid many more thousands of dollars if you got unlucky?
The cost-benefit trade-off is there, and the powers that be are prioritizing cancer.
Google Fiber wrecked entire city streets relearning these things the dumbest way possible (then left the street repair bills to the us the taxpayers, because of course they did).
That's what you get with arrogant and ignorant large bureaucracies, anywhere, anytime :-)
Mind you I also lived near RAF, USAAF and Luftwaffe bases back in the day and several flights of Phantoms, Starfighters, Jaguars and Tornadoes and the rest can make quite a din. Phantoms were pretty huge engined beasts with minimal effort made for noise reduction. A "finger four" lighting up their after burners to gain altitude really fast is ear splitting.
> ...93 million CT examinations performed ... projected to result in approximately 103 000 future cancers ... cancer risk was higher in children ... CT-associated cancers could eventually account for 5% of all new cancer diagnoses annually.
Although keep in mind that these numbers do need context. cancer != death. That ranges from cold comfort (in the case painful chemo treatment & years of fear) to a critical factor (based on how the USA diagnoses it, approximately 6% of men will have prostate cancer that does not require treatment).
Based only on these numbers above and my prior beliefs, I would say that that either
A) CT scans are a necessary evil that haven't been adequately replaced
or
B) These numbers less problematic than one might expect, due to some quirk of the data
I generally trust the USA's medical establishment on new treatment, though I've heard that they're slow to clamp down on outdated treatments.
[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar... https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/radiati...
Also, framed another way, 5% of cancer cases caused by CT scans would mean that 1 in 20 people in the cancer ward were placed there by a CT scan. Or alternatively, phasing out CT scans would prevent 1 in 20 cancer cases, with prevention being worth more than a cure for every 1 cancer patient in 20.
OTOH, considering how well the 'megabit-chip' went, I'm wondering wtf they'd do with fiber, at the times? For the military, agencies, ministries and some universities maybe, but for the masses? How common was the 'stinknormales telephon' in households, back then?
And yes, you can still see bone in an MRI. A related question is, how well can you see soft tissue in a CT scan?
CT scans are routinely used to diagnose soft tissue problems, where they are the wrong tool for the job: an MRI would be more ideal. CT scans in these situations expose the patient to avoidable cancer risks while compromising the level of insight provided to the medical provider.
Interoperative imaging is another specialist use case. The need for CT scans in specialist situations speaks to the failure to develop alternatives with lower cancer risks. Also, the need to use a CT scan in certain situations does not mean that the CT scans should be used in other situations.