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Google follows up on gag

Thursday, April 5, 2007 | 05:38 PM ET

by Saleem Khan, CBC News Online

Google called back with more on its TiSP toilet-based internet service. Spokeswoman Sunny Gettinger pointed out that although the ad hoc Google April Fools team cooked up its fictitious service as a gag, there are jurisdictions where sewer lines are used as conduits for broadband internet service.

Googling "sewer internet" yields a range of results that include the borough of Bournemouth, U.K., which is laying some 1.4 kilometres of fibre optic cable in its sewers to save the cost of digging up roads as it expands its internet offerings.

Gettinger also said that she did receive some serious inquiries about the TiSP, but most were just congratulatory messages from people sharing their admiration for a skillfully presented joke.

And as it turns out, she wasn't avoiding a deluge of calls about TiSP as I had speculated – she was just on vacation.

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