Fibre vs Mother Nature: Will Your Internet Survive? | Dirt Report

Why fibre is more resilient

NBN Co is encouraging people in high-risk areas to upgrade from older copper connections to fibre-to-the-premises. The main reason is that fibre removes several weaknesses associated with copper and fibre-to-the-node services.

Fibre-optic cable carries data using light rather than electricity. That means it does not conduct electricity and is not affected by lightning interference in the same way as copper. Fibre also does not corrode, has relatively low signal loss over long distances and is commonly protected in underground conduits.

The network design is also important. A fibre-to-the-premises connection can operate as a passive optical network, with no powered equipment required in the street between the premises and the exchange. Fibre-to-the-node services, by contrast, depend on powered cabinets or nodes before the connection changes to copper. If those cabinets lose power during a storm, many customers can lose service at once.

What the storm comparison showed

The video cites Townsville and Ingham as examples used to demonstrate the difference between mostly fibre and mostly fibre-to-the-node infrastructure. In the comparison presented, the mostly fibre area recorded a 13.4% outage rate during a storm, with customers restored in under four hours. The mostly fibre-to-the-node area recorded an 86.6% outage rate, with recovery taking days.

The figures are presented as evidence that fibre networks can have fewer faults and faster restoration in difficult conditions. Fibre can also support higher speeds without the same distance-related performance reduction associated with copper. The video notes that future speed upgrades can involve changing equipment at each end, while the cable itself may remain in service for decades.

Fibre is not disaster-proof

Fibre’s advantages do not make it immune to extreme weather. Floods, cyclones, falling trees, ground movement or construction work can still cut underground lines. Although the cable is protected in conduits, severe events can damage the conduit or the fibre inside it.

The transcript also refers to a 2011 flood on the south coast of New South Wales that severed a Telstra fibre cable and affected landline access to emergency Triple Zero calls. This illustrates that major fibre faults can have consequences beyond ordinary home internet outages.

Some fibre networks include redundancy, allowing traffic to be rerouted along another strand or path when one section is damaged. However, this depends on how the particular network has been designed.

The power problem at home

Even a full fibre-to-the-premises connection will stop working if the home loses electricity. The optical network may not need powered equipment in the street, but the modem and router inside the property still require power. Exchange batteries and other network backups also have limits.

A battery backup for networking equipment, or a mobile hotspot, may therefore be useful during an outage. These options do not replace emergency preparation, and people should not remain at home during a bushfire simply to maintain an internet connection.

Repairing damaged fibre

Fibre repairs can be technically demanding because technicians must clean, align and fuse very fine glass strands. A damaged cable may take hours to splice. The video’s comparison is that fibre repairs can still be faster than copper repairs, which may take days, but a broken fibre connection is not an instant fix.

This means fibre is best understood as more resilient rather than indestructible. It is less exposed to electrical problems and can recover more quickly in some circumstances, but a major physical break can affect service for any technology using that route.