Today, Rob van Esch, Executive Director of NLKabel (the Dutch equivalent of the American National Cable &  Telecom Association), published an elaborate April’s fools joke. It is, however, a mix of copied jokes. I had a meeting with Rob in 2005 and it became evident that the cable industry didn’t believe in Fiber Optics as being a threat. Nowadays his and the cable industry’s attention is quite focused on distracting and distorting the fiber truth.

I like a good joke, but Rob is using April 1st as a gimmick to ridicule fiber initiatives. It would be fun if it were original. His joke, however, is a mix of two earlier April fools hoaxes; Google’s toilet  fiber initiative, and Red Herring’s Dutch canal route digitization. Let’s see what he is up to:

This picture shows  a “general announcement” on Rob’s newsletter:

The website:

But how do we know it was Rob? Well, he registered the domain name:

Rob, the fiber guys are smarter than you think! Who’s the fool now? ;-)