5th of January 2026 – MSN News published a syndicated piece describing how ICON aims to transform Europe’s telecom fiber infrastructure into a tool for earthquake detection and structural monitoring. The article highlights the relevance of ICON for public safety, infrastructure maintenance, and environmental resilience. 🔗 Read the MSN feature:EU invests €5 million to detect…
Read more
16th of December 2025 – AZO Sensors published an article explaining the EU’s €5M investment in ICON to enable earthquake detection, infrastructure protection, and environmental sensing via existing telecom networks. The article notes ICON’s potential to provide real‑time monitoring without requiring new sensing hardware, showcasing the efficiency of using existing fiber networks as sensing tools.…
Read more
The Engineer featured an article exploring ICON’s work to convert standard fiber‑optic cables into continuous environmental sensors. The publication highlights the value of distributed fiber sensing technologies for infrastructure monitoring, and how ICON’s approach could influence future telecom network operations, safety monitoring, and resilience planning. 🔗 Full article:Project Turns Fibre Optic Cables into Environmental Sensors
30th of November 2025 – Electro‑Optics, a leading publication in photonics and optical engineering, has published a feature story about ICON’s innovative approach to transforming Europe’s vast fiber‑optic infrastructure into a pervasive environmental sensing platform. The article emphasizes: It highlights ICON’s unique advantage in leveraging existing telecom fibre, making monitoring more scalable and cost‑effective. 🔗…
Read more
The ICON consortium gathered in Copenhagen in October 2025 for its plenary meeting, bringing together partners from academia, industry, research institutes, and telecom operators.The event provided an opportunity to: Review progress in each Work PackageAlign the technical roadmap for upcoming sensing experimentsDiscuss results from early laboratory and field‑testing activitiesStrengthen collaboration between engineering, scientific, and operational…
Read more
9th of November 2025 – ICON’s Scientific Coordinator, Dr. Aleksandra Kaszubowska‑Anandarajah, was interviewed by Sveriges Radio, Sweden’s national public broadcaster, for a segment investigating the vulnerabilities of Europe’s undersea digital infrastructure.In the interview, she explains how Ireland’s strategic position in Europe’s subsea connectivity landscape makes it especially important to ensure the reliability of optical networks.…
Read more
22nd of October 2025 – The ICON project was prominently featured in the webinar “Sustainable Future Networks: Focus on ICON Project”, which explored how next‑generation optical infrastructures can evolve to meet Europe’s sustainability, resilience, and digital‑sovereignty goals.During the session, project representatives discussed how ICON is developing distributed fiber sensing capabilities—turning existing telecom cables into powerful…
Read more
On the 8th May 2025, at ONDM 2025, the ICON Project will co-organise the Optical Communication and Sensing (OCandS) Roadmap Workshop — a strategic session exploring the integration of communication networks and sensing technologies. Co-chairsAleksandra Kaszubowska-Anandarajah – Trinity College DublinSteinar Bjørnstad – Tampnet Organised byThe IEEE INGR Optics Working Group and the ICON Project, funded…
Read more
The ICON Project (Intent-Based Optical Networks with Integrated Sensing) is a Horizon Europe initiative focused on building a new generation of intelligent optical networks that seamlessly integrate sensing functionalities into their architecture. ICON will transform Europe’s fibre infrastructure into a global-scale sensing platform, enabling applications across mobility, environmental monitoring, and infrastructure resilience. The project officially…
Read more