For years I’ve talked about the value of fiber in getting fast broadband to a house or community. Today I learned about a nice byproduct – the value of the fiber as a sensor. Imagine you have fiber deployed alongside a highway. The fiber can be used a sensor along that road to track traffic or sense a construction nearby that might mean a backhoe is getting dangerously close to the fiber, or it might sense a car that has unexpected stopped late at night on a remote road.

There’s video from the Fiber Optic Sensing Association that does a good job describing the idea, the benefits and the how it’s done.