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Ask4 is a leading provider of Internet, smart building tech and IT solutions, delivering connectivity and technology services to hundreds of thousands of users internationally. Their goal is to support its clients’ aims and deliver the best connectivity experience to their residents.
Ask4 has chosen SICOM as its prefered provider of Dark Fibre connectivity to its sites in York, Bath, Southampton, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Lancaster, Falmouth, Sheffield, Nottingham, Cardiff and Birmingham with all sites expecting to be delivered by the end of June 2024.
SICOM appointed as fibre specialists for new leak-sensing project.
SICOM has been appointed by Focus Sensors Ltd as dark-fibre specialists in a new £1.49m project supported by the OFWAT Water Breakthrough Challenge and Severn Trent Water.
By 2030 the water industry must reduce leakage by 1 billion litres/day to ensure future water supplies. This requires step change innovation that is more accurate and affordable than current leak detection tools. This can be delivered by using fibre-optic cables already adjacent to water pipes as leak sensors.
This concept was demonstrated in the first catalyst funding round (Dark Fibre 1). This project, Dark Fibre 2, builds on this work to solve remaining challenges, prove at scale and build industry confidence. The solution will then be brought to market to enable reductions in leakage whilst keeping customers’ bills low.
Focus Sensors’ IndusTM system turns standard telecommunications optical fibres into thousands of sensors. When connected to dark optical fibres within existing carrier network cables, Indus can be used to sense and locate leaks from water pipes.
Leaks are a major issue for water companies and this project, financed by the OFWAT Innovation Fund and supported by Severn Trent Water, will enable dark fibre leak detection to be demonstrated and brought as a commercial basis for adoption by water companies all over the UK.
SICOM are specialists in dark fibre and are a key part of the project. Our role is to provide dark fibre in five test areas. In doing so, we will develop a methodology to locate and commission fibre networks for leak detection using Indus.
Archive
SICOM undertook a comprehensive survey of all carriers and dark fibre in the Swindon area and provided detailed options including costs to connect to each carrier using either dark fibre or dedicated fibre with multiple wavelengths.
SICOM’s data centre survey team evaluated a privately owned location in the midlands and found several other carriers nearby that could be connected diversely at a cost of less than £100,000. This is likely to have added many times this in value to the site because prospective buyers now know that having four or five carriers is easily achievable.
SICOM have been engaged by GCRE (Global Centre of Railway Excellence) to consult on the infrastructure requirements for their new site in South Wales. SICOM researched the area and found a number of options to connect to the government network, other data centres, the internet and Cloud Service Providers using either leased bandwidth or dark fibre for the “last mile”. The adoption of an Open Access Network Partnership with a suitable business ISP was recommended to provide fast and flexible provisioning of many services ranging from broadband-level bandwidth up to optical wavelengths. Openreach was contracted to provide diversely-routed multi-fibre cables between the site and two local exchanges in preparation for the data centre opening next year.
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