Background The law n° 44/2001 of 30/11/2001 governing telecommunications, especially in its article 47 stipulates that It is forbidden to install any telecommunications infrastructure or terminal equipment on, over or under any public or private land other than in accordance with this law, Therefore all telecommunications operators wishing to install telecommunications infrastructure and terminal equipment on, over or under public land must make a request in conformity with the law in force. Furthermore, article 49 of the same law stipulates that If, when installing telecommunications infrastructure or terminal equipment, any telecommunications network provider (or anyone employed or contracted by him/her) damages or destroys any telecommunications infrastructure or terminal equipment belonging to another network provider or any cables, pipes, conduits, poles, ducts, masts, aerials or transmitters, belonging to broadcasting companies or other utility companies must pay compensation to the affected company. Usually application to install telecommunications infrastructure or terminal equipment apply are made based on what is provided for by Ministerial order 6/dc/04 of 07/06/2004 requests for installation of telecommunications facilities and terminal equipment of public and private property, Unfortunately, this Ministerial order doesn’t respond to preoccupations leased by this article 49 of the n° 44/2001 of 30/11/2001 governing telecommunications related to restriction of the damage or destruction of any other infrastructure during the installation of telecommunications infrastructure or terminal equipment. These Guidelines for Fiber Optic Cables Underground Installation have been developed with an aim of avoiding damages to existing underground infrastructure such as existing Fiber Optic Cables, sewage or water pipes, electrical cables or other telecommunications cables. They also intend to insure that the installation of Fiber Optic Cables is done in accordance with telecommunication standards. The methodology used during the exercise of drafting and validation of these guidelines followed the following steps: It has been a step of Data collection/Benchmarking done by the technical Unit, after collecting data; the same Unit initiated the draft of a kind of Regulations. When this document was at the stage of zero draft, its legal framework had the nature of regulations. RURA decided to redraft it in the form of Guidelines; the change of the legal nature did not affect the content of the document, only these guidelines have been given an appropriate legal writing. iv