Standard fiber is armored , yes . It ' s usually Plastic Metal Plastic . Direct burial grade will have two layers of metallic armor , Plastic Metal Plastic Metal Plastic . It ' s much harder to manipulate though because it ' s stiff as hell and extremely heavy . Conduit is useful to allow for future cable install . Basically , you invest more upfront to save on cost for future runs . Useful when you ' re an ISP and you ' ve got tons of fiber cables going everywhere , less useful if you are en enterprise with a fixed private network . We currently have about 35 , 000 km of fiber cable , with a total fiber length if you took all strands and put them back to back of 1 . 2 million km . And we only cover about 75 % of Quebec . ISPs have so much fiber cables hidden everywhere , it ' s crazy .