What do you think? Good idea or bad idea?
Repairing leaks quicker would be helpful, but the bills would not be reduced. Think it’s a good idea.
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Yes I quite agree Cinders, but I think this is a cracking idea and I wish I thought of it… 
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It’s good that the project is being thoroughly tested to ensure that fibre (and sensors) in drinking water pipes is safe. It might be important to keep the project, and its implementation after successful test results, closed and strictly limited, say, to one player which may be the water supplier themselves, since the more companies the drinking water network is made accessible to, the riskier it may become. Clear regulations regarding materials that can be used are also needed. Alternatively, what about the electricity grid being used instead?
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Potentially it sounds a good way to tap into the internet.
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I can relate to that.
Many, many, many years/decades ago - late 1960s - when I worked at the PO Tower in London I attended a demo (in work time) at London University of these new fangled things called lasers.
In the hall for this demo they had four or five set up on a table each (each took up the whole table). Walking into the room the air was full of dots of light caused by the interference patterns from these lasers as they reacted with each other - they leaked light everywhere. The dots in the air was really weird.
In one of the demos the laser light was shot into a large glass container filled with water which had a tap on the side, the laser aimed at the tap. When the tap was opened the laser bean travelled down the water flow (ie round a bend). Very clever I thought, but so what? I could see the potential when they shot a hole in a razer blade though.
I had seen the future but it went completely over my head, for years I never got why I had been sent to this event, I worked in microwave radio for gods sake!!
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This has not been properly thought through. With a fibre optic cable running through an existing pipe, how could a failed section of pipe be replaced with a FO running through it?
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A good point. Maybe a join every 50/100 yards could overcome it. As long as the cable doesn’t leak information. 
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I think Mart is right. It’s hard to imagine that they’d be promoting the fibre-in-pipe solution although they know that a failed section can not be fixed because of the FOC inside. Where a pipe section must be replaced the FOC will be removed on a temporary basis and then re-installed.
Ha ha, I should have read the article first. I thought the water was the medium through which the light signal passed. It would be interesting to see how they bypassed valves (either stop or non return).
In new estates here no one is allowed to dig up the road as there are a collection of ducts and manholes provided for all services to use.
Digging up the road is a bit old fashioned anyway as they use horizontal directional boring machines in older areas.
They used one next to my place a few years ago, I learned a lot just talking to the blokes as they worked (they probably wished I would bugger off) The bit is under complete control all the time by the operator, they are brilliant. The bit popped out of the ground two streets away, where it went after that I have no idea.
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I was wondering how they would navigate valves and stop taps if the optic fibre was actually running through the pipe. I did read the article Bruce and still thought the same as you. Perhaps the walls of the pipe itself would be designed with fibre optic already embedded in it, but this would mean replacing all the existing pipes, so that’s a none starter. The article states that it has already been trialled in Spain, so I would be interested to understand how these obstacles can be overcome. Obviously somebody must have come up with a solution.
They used some kind of mole to replace a gas pipe under my dads drive that had been block paved, and they only disturbed it at each end with a small hole.
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