How A Cut Fiber Optic Cable Stops Cell Service

The six biggest causes of impairment to fiber networks

damage fiber networks No matter how well a cobweb installation is planned and deployed, and how strong the cable you use, you can't completely guard against problems down the line. Whether it is acts of God, farthermost weather or merely an old woman with a spade, fiber networks can be disrupted by factors outside your control.

Based on our ain experiences here are the top vi culprits for causing cobweb damage:

1. Animals

From squirrels to rats and rabbits, rodents like to chew whatever they can notice. Squirrels seem to evidence a item liking for fiber cables - in 2011, Time Warner Cable had to replace 87 miles of cablevision in Western New York, due to squirrel chews. Across the Atlantic, rats knocked out internet access for Virgin Media customers in parts of Scotland after attacking cables twice in two days.

Meanwhile in the Rockies, bears tin can exist a problem if cables are small enough to fit between their jaws. More exotically, Indian engineers mutter well-nigh monkeys eating cobweb – a particular issue around temples dedicated to the animals. Why can't they just stick to peanuts and bananas?

ii. Vehicle impairment

You'd think that drivers of alpine vehicles or heavy plant would expect up besides as forward, just ofttimes they seem to completely lack spatial awareness. Impairment ranges from the mundane – such as truckers running into poles and bringing down lines, to the ridiculous.

A dump truck in Kentucky tipping salt took down 300 feet of fiber by driving along with its dump bed upward, while a trucker misdirected down a residential street in Pennsylvania plowed on, collecting cables as he went. Not every cable is strong enough to survive this – though ours has coped with a 32,000 lb military vehicle parking on information technology...

3. Vandalism

Sometimes it seems that the world is full of idiots who think it is fun to destroy belongings – even though information technology is probable to cut internet access to their own homes or communities.

Co-ordinate to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in that location accept been more than a g malicious attacks that led to severe outages between 2007 and 2014 in the United States. And that only counts incidents that affect at least 900,000 minutes of user calls or 911 services.

From people who dig upwards fiber thinking information technology can exist resold, to those who use cables for target do, a large proportion of avoidable network damage comes from the very people that would exist on the phone complaining of a lack of service. Or they would, if they hadn't just trashed the network they rely on...

nt natural disasters, but networks need to be reliable and protected enough to deal with normal weather condition conditions, such as ice, snow and wind.No matter how well yous build a network, freak weather and natural disasters, such as hurricanes or storms, can undo all your skilful work. This has a knock-on effect as cablevision harm hits wired and wireless communications, leaving communities isolated exactly when they need admission to information.

On the plus side, the destruction acquired by Hurricane Sandy led Verizon to significantly upgrade its network, replacing copper with cobweb cables in affected areas.

5. Acts of God

Some things you just tin't plan for. A boat'south anchor cut through not ane, but two, Egyptian undersea cables in 2008, cutting connectivity to the Middle Eastward and South Due east Asia and forcing traffic to go along dissimilar routes.

On land (just), Level iii Communications had to replace aerial cables after a small-scale plane clipped them while trying to touch on downward at Burbank International Airport in California.

Sometimes you lot just have to shrug, and get on with fixing the damage.

6. Lilliputian erstwhile ladies

And the near dangerous fiber foe is... a footling one-time lady.

Back in 2011, an unnamed 75-year-old Georgian woman cut fiber access to the whole of the neighbouring country of Armenia. While scavenging for copper her spade went through the main fiber link between the countries, blacking out the internet for iii.2 million Armenians for five hours. The cable was normally more than deeply buried, only landslides or heavy pelting may have exposed it.

Obviously cables become cut by contractors (or fifty-fifty homeowners) all the time, merely not usually causing harm on this sort of scale. Permit's hope the police reminded her that bits of cobweb don't take any resale value...

Paradigm ii by Matt Clare

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