Nature displays its destructive powers every time a wildfire tears across part of the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the potential loss of lives or homes is the most devastating part of these disasters, they also take a toll on critical communications infrastructure. During the 2019 Kincade fire, up to 27 percent of the wireless cell sites in California\u2019s Sonoma County were knocked offline<\/a>. In 2020 yet another wildfire in California\u2019s Bay Area left up to 5,000 residential and 250 commercial customers without wired broadband Internet and Internet-based phone service<\/a>. When the North Bay wildfires hit the state in 2017, 160,000 wired customers and 85,000 wireless customers lost their service<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These scenarios have become worryingly common. In 2017 Hurricanes Irma and Maria destroyed 80 percent of aboveground broadband fiber and 90 percent of last-mile fiber in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands<\/a>. In 2012 the total number of Internet outages in the U.S. nearly doubled<\/a> during the four days after Hurricane Sandy caused massive flooding along the East Coast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The biggest weather-related threats to America\u2019s Internet infrastructure<\/a> include: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Severe weather events can disrupt Internet service by: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Internet outages during a major weather event aren\u2019t just an inconvenience \u2013 they can be a matter of life or death. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c911 circuits run across our network. So if one of our broadband sites goes down, you\u2019re not getting 911 calls,\u201d says David Hunt, Zayo\u2019s Manager of Infrastructure Engineering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During severe weather Internet connectivity, it\u2019s a critical part of emergency communication and response services.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAt times when communities most require essential services for situational awareness and information dissemination, they face the most significant disruptions [during weather-related disasters]. This poses a substantial challenge to both individuals and emergency services, exacerbating an already challenging situation,\u201d researchers at Texas A&M University concluded in a 2024 study<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zayo\u2019s field ops are incredible because they do whatever it takes, even if they get a call at 2:30 in the morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Zayo takes a proactive approach, strategically planning, routing, and building our broadband infrastructure to protect it from potentially catastrophic weather conditions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you lose a site basically anywhere on that ring, you can still go backward across that path. Either way, with fiber you have alternate paths,\u201d says Hunt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He adds that Zayo deploys several measures at its sites to prevent broadband outages during severe weather, including: <\/p>\n\n\n\n While residents hunker down indoors during a bad storm, Zayo\u2019s field operations crews must often venture out into the elements to make sure connectivity continues. When a recent hurricane approached Florida, Zayo field operations team arranged for fuel supplies to keep coming into Zayo\u2019s site to sustain its portable backup generator. Later, Zayo field crews removed downed trees from power lines to help the local utility company restore electricity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes extreme weather forces Zayo\u2019s field crews to work extremely long hours and get creative. During a heat wave, crew members at a network site in Spokane, Washington spent almost 24 hours manually spraying water on units to keep them cool and functional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAt one point we actually had to borrow a hose from a neighbor because we lost our own water at the site,\u201d Hunt recalls. \u201cZayo\u2019s field ops are incredible because they do whatever it takes, even if they get a call at 2:30 in the morning.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Zayo\u2019s always looking ahead, trying to build more resilience into our broadband networks for the future. For example, Hunt says Zayo has purchased newer, more heat-resistant air conditioning coils to keep sites running during scorching heat waves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe buy all our AC units with extra heavy coils for high temperatures. As opposed to just 90 degrees, we make sure they can withstand at least 115 or 125 degrees,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s just one small part of Zayo\u2019s deepening commitment to plan, design, build, and maintain broadband infrastructure that keeps you \u2013 and life-saving emergency services \u2013 connected, whatever the weather brings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nature displays its destructive powers every time a wildfire tears across part of the United States. While the potential loss of lives or homes is the most devastating part of these disasters, they also take a toll on critical communications infrastructure. During the 2019 Kincade fire, up to 27 percent of the wireless cell sites […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12630,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"3983,4000,3998,1680,2820,3962","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","resource-post-excerpt":"Zayo\u2019s broadband Internet infrastructure is resilient to maintain critical emergency connectivity in extreme weather events like hurricanes and wildfires.","footnotes":""},"resource-topics":[],"displayed":[],"resources-categories":[44],"industry":[],"services-amp-solutions":[31],"class_list":["post-12629","resources","type-resources","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","resources-categories-blog","services-amp-solutions-fiber-transport-services"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zayoustrans.burbledev.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resources\/12629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zayoustrans.burbledev.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resources"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zayoustrans.burbledev.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/resources"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zayoustrans.burbledev.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resources\/12629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zayoustrans.burbledev.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zayoustrans.burbledev.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"resource-topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zayoustrans.burbledev.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource-topics?post=12629"},{"taxonomy":"displayed","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zayoustrans.burbledev.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/displayed?post=12629"},{"taxonomy":"resources-categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zayoustrans.burbledev.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resources-categories?post=12629"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zayoustrans.burbledev.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=12629"},{"taxonomy":"services-amp-solutions","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zayoustrans.burbledev.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/services-amp-solutions?post=12629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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Broadband Internet as emergency infrastructure<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Zayo\u2019s network resiliency efforts <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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