Using ‘Fibre in Water’ to provide high-speed broadband and service resilience to communities of Yorkshire

Telecoms and Water Combined Operations (TAWCO) Project

‘Fibre in Water’ is an ambitious project to develop both operational and commercial models that could allow the UK's water networks to be used as a conduit for delivering high-speed broadband to homes and businesses. Yorkshire Water could then use the fibre-optics installed within its network to detect and fix leaks quicker, improve resilience and reduce water loss. 

Stantec is providing operational technical management and leakage strategy consulting services to the Telecoms and Water Combined Operations (TAWCO) consortium. This calls upon the expertise of its Smart Networks team based in the UK.

Bringing together water and telecoms presents unique asset management challenges that must be overcome to enhance both the scalability and speed of adoption of ‘Fibre in Water’. Fibre-optic sensing is predicted to play a leading role in condition-based monitoring and leak detection in water assets over the coming years. Being able to leverage acoustic, strain and temperature data at such granularity on the water network could allow for near-real time insights and can let water companies move progressively towards a proactive fix before fail strategy.