Orkney Broadband Rollout Ran Fibre Cables via Water Pipes

The Scottish Government (SG) has revealed that nearly every home and business in Papa Westray, on the remote archipelago of Orkney, now has access to faster broadband speeds. This is after contractor CloudNet used the community-owned water authority’s existing infrastructure (pipes used for drinking water) to run new fibre optic cables.

Much of mainland Orkney already has access to Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband technology, which is thanks to deployments by Openreach (BT) and the addition of several new subsea fibre cables as part of the SG’s £600m Reaching 100% (R100) project. But some of the smaller and much more remote outlying isles, such as Papa Westray, have otherwise been forced to endure some horrifically slow speeds.

However, fixed wireless ISP CloudNet has sought to change this, not least by creating a backhaul capacity link using radio signals (we assume this is a Microwave link) between Papa Westray and Westray. After that, the local homes and businesses were reached by running fibre optic cables via Drinking water pipes. In addition, remote sensors were placed in the water pipe to provide a hi-tech way to monitor the island’s water quality.

The development was only possible because the water system is owned by the community, which streamlines the process of gaining permissions and causing less disruption to the island’s roads (the fibre cable is delivered through a second pipe housed within the drinking water network). By comparison, the UK gov’s own c.£6.2m “Fibre in Water” trial (Project TAWCO) was shelved after running into various regulatory and other barriers (here).

Richard Lochhead, Scottish Business Minister, said:

“This ingenious approach represents a less disruptive way of delivering faster connectivity to all on Papa Westray. Scotland is famous the world over for its innovation. We are working with rural communities in the most imaginative ways possible to bring faster broadband to some of the hardest to reach parts of the country.

“This project showcases engineering creativity at its best and makes it easier for residents to do business and access essential services such as health and education.

“This will also help attract people to live and work on Papa Westray. Under the £600 million R100 programme, the Scottish Government is helping deliver a fair, green and growing economy for all our regions.”

CloudNet Managing Director, Greg Whitton, said:

“CloudNet are proud to have delivered this Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme project to the most remote island in Orkney – Papa Westray – the first successful commercial project of its kind in the UK.

Due to the island topography, we used the water network to deliver fibre to the premises. This helped minimise excavations and excessive construction costs on the project to meet the programme needs.”

Sadly, CloudNet’s website doesn’t appear to reveal any useful details about the service on their website, such as how much customers have to pay for it and what broadband speeds are available. But the voucher scheme usually requires operators to deliver a network that’s at least capable of offering download speeds greater than 30Mbps, which will be a lot better than the c.0.5-5Mbps speeds many on the island had before.

The new broadband network also enables, for example, remote monitoring of livestock via CCTV and home healthcare check-ups via video call. It also supports visitor accommodation booking systems and tourism facilities on the island of just 90 residents.