Codelco is testing operating a copper mine 1,500 km away, over fiber optics

Codelco and NTT DOCOMO Business are testing an ultra-high-capacity optical network to operate heavy equipment at the El Teniente mine from 1,500 km away. The project, funded by the Japanese government, targets two problems at once: collapse risk in underground mining and a shortage of qualified operators.

Codelco and NTT DOCOMO Business announced a joint feasibility study to remotely operate heavy equipment at the El Teniente copper mine in Chile, from an operations center in Rancagua — 1,500 kilometers away. The project uses IOWN's All-Photonics Network, an ultra-high-capacity, ultra-low-latency optical communication technology developed by NTT, and was commissioned by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. The initial phase will assess whether the network can support remote control of heavy machinery, high-definition video monitoring, and the consolidation of multiple operations centers into a single base.

The real bottleneck in remote mining has never been equipment robotics — it has always been the network that carries the command to it. Operating an excavator or a mine truck remotely requires a link capable of transmitting high-definition video and control commands with virtually zero delay, because any latency hiccup in an underground operation turns into an immediate physical risk. IOWN's All-Photonics architecture attacks exactly that point: instead of converting the optical signal to electrical at every network node — the classic bottleneck of any conventional fiber network — it keeps the signal in light form from start to finish, which cuts latency and power consumption at the same time. This is an infrastructure bet, not an automation one: Codelco isn't testing whether an excavator can be automated, that already exists at other mines. It's testing whether the network can handle doing that 1,500 kilometers away, with the reliability an underground mining operation demands. There's a second layer of learning here about why that distance matters so much: mature underground mines like El Teniente concentrate two risks that remote operation tackles at once — the physical risk of collapse in deep areas and the structural shortage of qualified operators willing to work underground. Physically removing the person from the risk zone while simultaneously expanding the geographic range from which they can operate solves both problems with a single piece of infrastructure.

If the test proves the network sustains reliable remote operation at that distance, Codelco gains the option to consolidate operations centers currently spread across different mines into a single base — cutting fixed costs and extending the reach of each specialized operator. The project is also a sign of how telecom infrastructure partnerships, funded by a foreign government interested in exporting its own technology, are becoming part of the toolkit for miners facing deeper, more remote mines with fewer people willing to operate heavy equipment underground.