Broadband on tap? It’s already happening in Scotland…

Over the last hundred years, we’ve become accustomed to having utilities and services piped into our homes.

First there were pipes and taps delivering clean drinking water, followed by sewage networks.

The world’s first public electricity supply for street lighting arrived in 1881, decades after public gas networks were established to move gas through underground pipes.

Yet by the end of World War I, only six per cent of British homes had mains electricity.

Today, of course, such things are taken for granted – and so is broadband, usually piped in along Openreach cables or down proprietary fibre broadband networks.

However, in remote regions of the country, broadband infrastructure is often notable by its absence.

As a result, concerted efforts are being made to blend subterranean networks together – with occasionally inspired results…

Tapping into broadband networks

Residents of the 20 inhabited Orkney Islands are no strangers to challenges, and also no strangers to innovations.

These islands have long been a hub of renewable energy innovation, as well as hosting a dedicated Research and Innovation Campus operated by Robert Gordon University.

Now, residents of Papa Westray are able to receive fibre broadband through their water pipes.

This isn’t as ludicrous as it first sounds, since almost every commercial and residential premises on the island is connected to a community-owned water authority network.

Feeding a second pipe through an existing network minimises the infrastructure work required to distribute broadband cables to those same dwellings and workspaces.

It’s cost-effective and – because the water pipes themselves are incredibly robust – there’s little risk of services being damaged by an accidental strike from utility firms.

Planning issues are also largely negated, while there are no requirements to dig up roads and pavements – the classic hallmarks of fibre broadband network installations elsewhere.

Broadband on tap – first among sequels?

This is the first time anywhere in the UK that water pipes have been used to deliver residential broadband services, yet you might wonder why.

This pioneering Fibre in Water (FiW) technology can be rolled out at almost one kilometre per hour, with the main challenge concerning extricating the cables at each individual premises.

That’s not a major challenge on Papa Westray with its 85 properties, though scaling this technology up wouldn’t be difficult anyway, since the same principles would apply.

A bigger challenge to broadband on tap involves persuading privately owned water companies to permit the insertion of fibre optic cabling into their pipework.

One way of expediting this might involve incentivising the water companies by ensuring they also gain from the pipe-within-a-pipe concept.

Again, Orkney has potentially shown the rest of the UK the way forwards.

Sensors placed within the water pipes on Papa Westray monitor water quality, pressure and usage levels, using the broadband cables to transmit data back to the water board.

As such, the water board benefits despite having part of the circumference of its pipe network permanently obstructed by fibre optic cabling.

For heavily indebted water companies, the prospect of being paid to receive real-time data on water consumption and condition might prove compelling.

It would also help the government and Openreach to accelerate broadband rollout without contentious infrastructure like 5G masts or expensive solutions such as satellite broadband.

That’s particularly pertinent as fibre broadband rollout continues across urban regions, leaving only the hardest to reach homes in the most sparsely populated corners of the UK without coverage.