Hurricane Michael is being hailed as one of the most destructive hurricanes to ever hit the U.S. Armed with 155 mile per hour winds, the Category 4 storm ripped through parts of the Florida Panhandle in early October, leaving thousands of damaged and destroyed homes, businesses, and other buildings in its wake. It also managed to knock out many of the fiber optic networks in the region, which affected internet and cell phone service for tens of thousands of people in places like Panama City, Florida.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, Verizon, which is the biggest wireless carrier in the country, spent several days working hard to restore the fiber optic networks in the area. The company was able to restore cell service for about 98 percent of the people in Florida shortly after Hurricane Michael struck, but the hurricane threw Verizon for a loop and forced them to work overtime to get their fiber optic networks up and running again. In some cases, they made repairs to part of a network and got it working again only to have it go back down almost immediately due to recovery work being done in the area.
The good news is that Hurricane Michael didn’t keep the fiber optic networks throughout the Florida Panhandle down for long. Despite all of the damage that was done in different parts of the state, Verizon and other wireless carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile were able to deal with the outages they experienced and move past them relatively quickly. It proved that, while fiber optic cables certainly aren’t indestructible, it’s possible to make repairs to them and get them working the way they should again, even when disaster strikes.
At Connected Fiber, we believe in the power of fiber optic networks and can help you if you ever need to have emergency fiber optic restoration done. Call us at 910-443-0532 today to obtain our fiber optic repair services.
