There is an interesting new technology that just entered the market for deploying fiber networks. Aqualing is now marketing an installation technology that pulls fiber through water systems.

The company cites some major advantages of putting fiber in existing water systems.

• They cite a case study in Madison County, Kentucky where using the water pipes reduced the cost of a fiber installation by 50%.
• They also claim that building fiber through water pipes is faster than traditional construction, speeding time to market.
• Using the water system avoids all of the issues and time involved with putting fiber on poles or getting permits to bury fiber.
• This would also eliminate damages done to other utilities during the burying process – this eliminates having to locate existing underground utilities.
• This even eliminates problems with getting drops through yards that damage to flower beds and cut sprinkler systems.
• The company claims long-term network safety since fiber inside heavy water pipes should be safer than other forms of fiber deployment.

The biggest hurdle for deploying the technology will probably be convincing a water utility to allow fiber. A large percentage of water companies are municipally owned and conservative by definition. Water companies are going to want iron-clad guarantees that the installation process won’t cause any damage or leaks in the water system. They are always going to be leery about introducing anything new inside the pipes that could be perceived by the public as adding anything harmful to the water.

One odd downside of the idea is that when water systems are replaced on a street, which often lasts a week or longer, the broadband will also be out at the same time. This only happens to a given street once in a great while, but it happens.

I’m really curious about the method used to repair the fiber when there is a water main cut. I live in a city with a hundred year old water system, and water pipe problems are common. On my street, I recall the City having to do emergency digging to fix a water pipe leak three times in the last decade. I can’t imagine that the water utility here would pause that process to allow the fiber provider to splice fibers that are cut during water pipe excavation.

The technology offers an intriguing option for communities that own the water system to use the technology to install fiber everywhere. The biggest hurdle for community fiber networks is cost, and a lower-cost installation could make fiber feasible in many more communities.

I had to chuckle at one thing on the Aqualing website that said this would be a great option for BEAD networks. While some of BEAD will be used to build small villages and towns, most of BEAD is going to be built in rural areas that are not served by a water system.

This is also an intriguing concept in greenfield communities where the fiber could be preinstalled in the water pipes as streets are built.

This is not the first time that this idea has surfaced. I can recall several other companies that proposed building fiber in water or sewer systems. For whatever reason, those companies never caught on – which is not unusual for anything radically new. It took a lot of years for fiber builders to trust microtrenching. Nobody wants to build a network using a new technology and finding out that nobody else did so and support for the technology disappears.

I’m sure the company name was on purpose, but I’m never going to hear the company name and not hum Jethro Tull. Kudos.