The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport has launched a £4 million competition aimed at accelerating the rollout of broadband and mobile services via drinking water mains, together with helping to reduce leakage from the public water supply.

Fibre broadband cables could be fed through the country’s water pipes as part of the government’s plan to speed up the nationwide roll out of lightning-fast broadband and mobile coverage in rural areas.

Fibre in Water is an open competition which will allocate up to £4 million of R&D funding to projects that develop and build a pilot or pilots to facilitate delivery of advanced broadband and mobile services via drinking water mains to connect the hardest to reach areas of the UK with advanced fixed and mobile telecoms services - and also reduce water leakage from potable water pipes.

The project - Fibre in Water: Improving Access to Advanced Broadband and Mobile Services via Drinking Water Mains (FiW) - is being run by DCMS from HM Treasury’s Shared Outcomes Fund and is supported by DEFRA, BEIS and Cabinet Office.

According to DCMS, FiW will enable innovative technologies in the water industry and ‘future proof’ water and telecommunications infrastructure including de-risking the PSTN switch-off between 2021 and 2025.

DCMS: project will enable water industry to “radically reduce” current 20% clean water leakage

A statement issued by DCMS said:

“The project will also enable the water industry to radically reduce the current 20% clean water leakage and resulting carbon emissions, passing on benefits to consumers through lower bills. This is part of a wider industry effort as well as Ofwat which has a 50% reduction target on leakage.”

The funding will be available for cutting-edge innovators to trial what could be a quicker and more cost-effective way of connecting fibre optic cables to homes, businesses and mobile masts, without the disruption caused by digging up roads and land.

Civil works, in particular installing new ducts and poles, can make up as much as four fifths of the costs to industry of building new gigabit-capable broadband networks.

Digital Infrastructure Minister Matt Warman said:

“The cost of digging up roads and land is the biggest obstacle telecoms companies face when connecting hard-to-reach areas to better broadband, but beneath our feet there is a vast network of pipes reaching virtually every building in the country.

“So we are calling on Britain’s brilliant innovators to help us use this infrastructure to serve a dual purpose of serving up not just fresh and clean water but also lightning-fast digital connectivity.

“The project will also look to test solutions that reduce the amount of water lost every day due to leaks, which is 20% of the total put into the public supply. It will involve putting connected sensors in the pipes which allow water companies to improve the speed and accuracy with which they can identify a leak and repair it. Water companies have committed to delivering a 50% reduction in leakage, and this project can help to reach that goal.”

Deployment challenges for essential utilities such as water and telecoms are complex and tightly regulated - both are parts of the country’s critical national infrastructure. The project will consider the regulatory barriers as well as the economic, technical, cultural and collaborative challenges and impact on consumer bills.

The DCMS said the competition is aiming to find a suitable consortium of partners to deliver feasibility studies and technical pilot(s), as well as represent the interests and challenges faced by their industries.

Any solution used to trial fibre optic cables in the water mains will be approved by the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) before being used in a real world setting. The DWI will require rigorous testing ahead of approving any products that can be used in drinking water pipes.

Fibre has already been deployed in water pipes in other countries such as Spain.

The government is already considering giving broadband firms access to more than a million kilometres of underground utility ducts to boost the rollout of next-generation broadband - including electricity, gas and sewer networks - and will soon respond to a consultation on changing regulations to make infrastructure sharing easier.

Stephen Unger, Commissioner at the Geospatial Commission, commented:

“Fibre is the future of digital communications. Its unmatched performance and reliability can seamlessly connect our society together. But it took over a hundred years to build the legacy copper network, so replacing it with fibre won’t be easy.

“The best way to meet this challenge is to use existing infrastructure, such as the water pipes that already reach every home and business in the country. Our ambition must be for reliable broadband to become as easy to access tomorrow as drinking water is today.”

The Fibre in Water project is due to conclude in March 2024. The final year of the project will explore scaling proven solutions right across the country.

Deadline for applications to the competition is 4 October – click here for more information about the competition.