en.Wedoany.com Reported - Italian wholesale-only operator FiberCop announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Nokia to jointly test fiber sensing technology capable of transforming fiber access networks into advanced monitoring platforms.
The company stated on July 6, 2026, that fiber sensing can support two main application areas: network protection and perimeter environmental monitoring. At the operational level, the technology can detect, locate, and classify issues caused by events such as landslides, fallen trees, road construction, or malicious damage, thereby enabling faster intervention, reducing on-site work, and improving service continuity. The same infrastructure can also enable environmental monitoring services, detecting phenomena such as wind, temperature changes, seismic activity, floods, leaks, or traffic.
The agreement between FiberCop and Nokia aims to explore these two areas. The collaboration includes joint research and testing activities focused on solutions that enable fiber optics not only to transmit data but also to detect events and changes along the infrastructure in real time with the help of artificial intelligence. The core technology of the collaboration uses the network as a distributed sensing system, capable of capturing physical and environmental changes—such as vibrations, temperature variations, or mechanical stress—by analyzing optical signals. In this way, fiber optics evolve from a connectivity infrastructure into a platform capable of generating useful information for infrastructure management, security, and resilience.
Stefano Paggi, Chief Technology and Operations Officer at FiberCop, stated that this collaboration represents a significant step in the evolution of fiber infrastructure, which can become smarter and provide new useful information for its own management. The goal is to explore solutions that help enhance network reliability and open up new application possibilities to support the economy. John Harrington, Executive Vice President and Head of Europe at Nokia, said that artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the capabilities required of networks, which no longer merely transmit data but also help operators understand what is happening in real time. By combining Nokia Bell Labs' innovations with AI-driven fiber sensing technology, Nokia can help FiberCop transform its fiber network into an intelligent monitoring platform, providing infrastructure that is reliable and capable of sensing, understanding, and acting in real time. The collaboration can support faster detection of network issues, enable new sensing-as-a-service applications, and build more resilient networks.
The planned activities of FiberCop and Nokia will focus on two main areas: advanced monitoring and predictive maintenance, for identifying anomalies, performance degradation, and potential disruptions before they occur; and fiber sensing, for detecting external events and environmental conditions such as vibrations and movements along the infrastructure. According to FiberCop, these capabilities will help improve network security and support more precise monitoring of the surrounding environment. Testing will be conducted in controlled environments, including FiberCop's dedicated laboratories and isolated fiber segments, with the aim of evaluating the performance, accuracy, and applicable use cases of different technologies.
