FiberSense, a leading infrastructure sensing and monitoring company, is contributing its innovative sensing solutions in a joint initiative with Australian’s National Broadband Network (nbn®) to investigate and monitor the integrity of Australia’s digital backbone. As interest in protecting national critical infrastructure grows, nbn® is rising to the challenge. The solution? FiberSense will step in as part of a three-month trial to explore the use of FiberSense’s DigitalAsset™ technology to prevent damage to critical telecom cables.
FiberSense’s DigitalAsset sensing service will be deployed to monitor vibrations on nbn®’s fiber cable network in tandem with artificial intelligence to determine if the activities causing vibrations on the fiber pose a threat for accidental damage.
Ray Owen, nbn®’s CTO, commented on the trial stating, “We are very excited to be partnering with an Australian innovator like FiberSense to understand how optical sensing technology could be applied to nbn®’s extensive fiber network assets.”
The trial will operate at nbn’s® test facility along with a fiber cable path in Melbourne. This marks another step-up in FiberSense’s deployment in the Asia Pacific region. Dr. Mark Englund, Founder and CEO of FiberSense is equally as excited.
“We aim to be operating on all the world’s pre-eminent fibre networks and Australia’s nbn is certainly recognised as one of the ‘best of the best’ amongst other national operators,” Englund said. “The demonstration will apply our patented software based sensing portfolio to provide early warning and incident detection notifications that might impact critical infrastructure like the nbn from third party deliberate or accidental damage. Our DigitalAsset sensing service helps mitigate the impact of these all-too-common events – especially cable cuts.”
FiberSense’s DigitalAsset sensing portfolio features protect critical infrastructure through:
- Early warning and detection to not only identify, but minimize potential fiber cable strikes before they happen
- Detecting physical activity in the vicinity of optical cables carrying fibers connected to the FiberSense system
- Enhanced maintenance with real time condition monitoring
- “Dial before you dig” integration services to deter fiber cabled damage
The nbn® trial will run through the end of October 2022 with the opportunity for nbn® to expand services subject to trial outcomes.
FiberSense services monitor underground assets and have been activated across fiber networks in Europe, the Americas, Australia and across subsea cables linking major continents this year alone. For more information on FiberSense, visit www.fibersense.com and read the full press release here.
