NBN Co is looking at new ways to prevent accidental damage to its fibre, announcing today a new trial with a company by the name of FiberSense to monitor its cable network.
The company responsible for rolling out the National Broadband Network has kicked off the three-month trial with FiberSense, using its ‘DigitalAsset sensing services’ to detect certain vibrational frequencies on fibre. It’s also using artificial intelligence (AI) to determine whether the activities causing those vibrations are likely to cause accidental damage.
It’s very high-tech, but also very cool.
The FiberSense monitoring and diagnostic tech, NBN Co said, provides “additional levels of insight in protecting this nationally important infrastructure”.
Specifically, the FiberSense DigitalAsset service is expected to detect physical activity in the vicinity of optical cables carrying fibres connected to the FiberSense system. It’ll hopefully provide early warning/detection to identify and minimise potential fibre cable strikes before they happen and give NBN Co real-time condition monitoring.
“We are excited to understand how advanced optical monitoring and diagnostic technologies like those offered by FiberSense can provide additional levels of insight into the types of field activities that might be detected and how the response process could work when these activities get dangerously close to NBN network assets,” NBN Co chief technology officer Ray Owen said.
But why should you care? Well, it could mean fewer unplanned outages due to accidental damage.
For now, the FiberSense tech is being tested at an NBN Co test facility and on a fibre path in Melbourne before potentially having the tech roll out to its actual network.
The news follows NBN Co receiving a $2.4 billion investment from the federal government this month to help it upgrade an additional 1.5 million households from Fibre to the Node (FTTN) to Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) technology.