UK water utility provider Southern Water has deployed fiber broadband-powered sensing technology to reduce leaks in fresh water supply.

In order to do this, the company has partnered with fiber sensing firm Lightsonic, which has used the UK's largest broadband provider Openreach's full fiber network to monitor Southern Water's water pipes and identify potential leaks.

For water providers such as Southern Water, the ability to monitor leaks has never been more important, given this summer was one of the UK's driest on record and led to water companies introducing hosepipe bans to reduce water wastage.

It's estimated that around 2.6 billion liters (687 million gallons) of water is lost through leakage across England's water network every day, while the infrastructure itself is aging.

To mitigate such leaks, Lightsonic has deployed acoustic sensors to detect any leaks. These sensors have been deployed along existing telecommunications fiber networks that run alongside water pipes, and are able to use acoustic data to detect leaks in nearby water pipes.

This can provide technicians with accurate location data so they can check and stop a leak quickly and efficiently.

It appears to be working already, with Lightsonic and Openreach claiming that the deployment has already helped save more than four million liters of water per day across only 650km (404 miles) of the UK’s water network.

Lightsonic has previously worked with Openreach to support another water firm, Affinity Water.

“We’ve reduced leakage across our network for three consecutive years and continue to invest in innovative techniques and technologies to find and fix leaks even more effectively,” said Wayne Novelli, leakage and network strategy manager, Southern Water.

Trevor Linney, director of network technology at Openreach, added: “The results of our existing pilots with Lightsonic show that our new full fiber infrastructure can deliver value far beyond broadband – and could prove to be a real game changer in solving real-world challenges like water conservation. Combining Lightsonic’s technology with the reach of Openreach’s full fiber network makes continuous utility monitoring genuinely scalable, without the cost and disruption of building a separate sensor network.”