Smart. And a little gross. An Italian company has resorted to using remote-controlled toy submarines to run fiberoptic cable through the sewers of Milan.

The model of the submarine is apparently the Neptune SB-1, a $600 toy by Thunder Tiger of Taiwan. There’s a full article here but it’s in Italian. Seems pretty self-explanatory, though: attach cable to submarine, drop submarine into river of poo, pee, and bathwater, then pilot said submarine down to the poor sap on the other end of the pipe who’s gotta fish the thing out and connect the cable to whatever needs rigged up.

In unrelated news, think twice about bidding on used Neptune SB-1 toy submarines on eBay — you can never really know where they’ve been.

[via Slashdot]