Openreach: Fiber can sniff out leaky water pipes – if anyone bothers fixing them

Openreach claims its fiber network infrastructure can detect leaks in nearby water supply pipes, which could save millions of liters of the precious fluid... if the water companies can be bothered to fix them. The infrastructure arm of Britain's former state-owned telco BT says it has conducted a trial with Affinity Water and …

[RockBurner]

"That all depends on whether the torpid privatized water firms in England and Wales view detecting leaks as a priority."

Any that don't should be automatically receiving a "cease-and-desist" from the government and the controlling board disbanded.

[Giles C]

I would gaff thought that the ability to send someone out to a leak and get it fixed would be s as priority for a water company as not being able to to charge customers for lost water seems daft to me.

[DS999]

Its crazy to me

That water is privatized in the UK. In the US it is all (well almost all, I imagine there are a few exceptions here and there) municipal.

But not sure what you mean about "not getting to charge for lost water". If they are delivering x amount of water out their system resulting in x amount of water for customers that they charge y*x for, if over time due to accumulated leaks they are delivering 1.1x amount of water out their system but still resulting in only x amount of water for customers they will raise rates and charge 1.1y*x for it.

Only if there are some sort of controls on what they can charge (like my municipal system where the city council and mayor have to approve rate increases for water, and I assume any private company providing monopoly water service in a city will be under similar restraint) will they have incentive to actively look for leaks - assuming the leak is large enough that the savings in water will outweigh the cost of digging up the street and fixing it.

[vogon00]

Lost water doesn't matter to them sufficiently at the moment.

The cost of delivering water to you - including the losses in the pipe network - are well understood and covered in your bill....think 'We have to produce 130 litres to deliver 100 litres to you. Despite having a water meter, the per-litre rate you pay reflects to the actual cost of production (The 130L), not just your consumption (The 100L).

The same is true in the UK electricity network. If you look at your bill, you'll see a multi-field 'MPAN' number, including a field that describes the losses encountered in the transmission network to you (Which varies by location). That is reflected in your electricity charges.

The same is true in the supermarket and retail industries - a certain amount of product/stock is stolen/shop-lifted (The loss) and the price charged to you covers the losses incurred by the your supplier due to theft.

Delivery systems (Pipes/Wires/Road/Rail/Maritime and so on) always involve a degree of loss - there's no such thing as a perfect distribution network! I can't think of a company (For profit or otherwise) than can sustainably charge you less that it costs to deliver the product/service to you.

[EvilDrSmith]

So how would you then deal with Scottish Water and Northern Ireland water, when they fail to deal with water leaks as a priority?

Openreach is a private company, Affinity Water is a private company, and together they have come up with a technical solution to the problem of leak detection that looks like it may be effective. This should be something that we all should be applauding (and not just because we're supposed to be techies), yet somehow this is used as an attack on the privatised water industry.

Even though Openreach has "nationwide reach of its fiber infrastructure network," and "the system piloted here could scaled across the UK", it appears that that somehow does not include Scotland or Northern Ireland.

The adoption of this system nationwide depends on the non-privatised water companies in Scotland and Northern Ireland to view detecting leaks as a priority just as much as the privatised water companies in England and Wales.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The adoption of this system nationwide depends on the non-privatised water companies in Scotland and Northern Ireland to view detecting leaks as a priority just as much as the privatised water companies in England and Wales."

NI Water is a "GoCo" ("https://www.niwater.com/about-us/"), a Government Owned Company, and so it is sort of a half-way house towards privatisation, it just happens that the government owns 100% of the company.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its is an attack on the privatised water industry because that means we (the public) will be made to pay for this scheme, but they will keep all the profits. Whereas if it was a public water company and public comms provider (or their regulators weren't totally captured) then it could be implemented such that we (the customers) would actually see some benefit.

Its a great scheme, very clever and exactly the sort of thing the UK excels at discovering. And exactly the sort of scheme we totally fail to capitalise on :(

[Anonymous Coward]

Will it detract from their primary objective?

Which seems to be pumping feces into as many bodies of water as possible.

[Korev]

In three months of operation, Openreach says the sensing technology located more than 100 leaks, saving an estimated 2 million liters of water a day - or enough H2O to supply 10,000 people for a year.

They're making the big assumption that leaking pipes are actually fixed...

[Paul Herber]

Win, win, win

'there's definitely positive noises coming from the water industry'

The water industry can now take this new technology on board as their 100% method for leak detection. All other leak detection systems can now be disbanded, saving huuuuge amounts of money, meaning more bonuses for the bosses and better income for the shareholders! The fibre companies will be mandated to do the leak detection so they may as well keep and maintain the leak database as well, so no need for the water companies to do any extra record-keeping! When it all goes wrong it will definitely not be the water companies to blame either. It gets better by the minute!

[jonathan keith]

Re: Win, win, win

The water industry can now take this new technology on board as their 100% method for leak detection. All other leak detection systems can now be disbanded, saving huuuuge amounts of money, meaning more bonuses for the bosses and better income for the shareholders! The fibre companies will be mandated to do the leak detection so they may as well keep and maintain the leak database as well, so no need for the water companies to do any extra record-keeping! When it all goes wrong it will definitely not be the water companies to blame either. It gets better by the minute!

Amanda. This memo was discovered accidentally by an alert volunteer data-archaeologist during a random archive trawl in November 2088. Along with other material recovered from the same tranche, it provides some useful insight into the circumstances leading up to the Great Blackout of 2029, and helps explain the pressure-cooker society that the British population were living in at the time. On a personal note, having reviewed the material as a whole, I'm frankly astonished that it took so much to make them revolt in the first place, although that might also be why the following few months were quite so bloody. Looking at documents like these, from such a tragic and hideous moment in our history, we can only remind ourselves how lucky we are today to live in more enlightened times!

[Paul Herber]

Re: Win, win, win

Looks like global sarcasm and satire detectors have been disabled recently.

[jonathan keith]

Re: Win, win, win

I assume you're referring to the OP's downvote? Although that may have come from a shareholder, I suppose.

[AJ MacLeod]

It's the UK... they are litres and it's fibre.

[Bebu sa Ware]

These proposed AI barns

would fix the leaks gratis if they were to keep all the water thereafter saved.

[The Bobster]

I've tried licking the picture but nothing happened.

[I could be a dog really]

For me, it left a smudgy area on the screen.

[Anonymous Coward]

What caused the leaks?

How many of these water leaks were caused when Openreach dug a trench "nearby" to lay their fibre? And how many fibre outages will there be when the water companies dig a trench to repair their leak?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What caused the leaks?

> And how many fibre outages will there be when the water companies dig a trench to repair their leak?

And that is why we are going to wait until all the leaks have been detected, before we start fixing the first one.

[colin79666]

Going to need some better cable management if it goes into production. What a mess.

[Will Godfrey]

Won't help at all

The entire UK infrastructure is falling apart. There are leaks all over the place - one I remember was there a whole year before it was fixed. The electricity supply in my road is borderline, but instead of actually replacing the whole cabling they added bridging cables from one side of the road to the other in attempt to average the load for both lines. The roads and pavements themselves are a disaster of humps. dips, patches on top of patches and tyre destroying pot holes.

Oh, and if that's not enough they are building blocks of high-rise flats on every square yard of land in an area that already gets brought to a standstill every weekday rush hour.

[David Hicklin]

Re: Won't help at all

Indeed, the Great Blackout of 2029 as mentioned earlier gets closer every day, I do wonder how much it *would* take for the public to say Enough ! and rise up.

[Ken Moorhouse]

Fibre: Good for incontinence as well as constipation

See title

[moarthumbsdownsplease]

"Lick to Enlarge?" uh... cough cough.