Building Broadband Network Resilience | Protect and Restore Connectivity Faster | Corning

Darin Howe & Barry Walton
Published: September 11, 2025

It’s not your imagination. Devastating and costly natural disasters are happening more now than in the last 40 years. U.S. government data shows hurricanes, heatwaves, floods, wildfires, and ice storms are striking more frequently every year and with greater damage. The data shows that since 1980, the U.S. has sustained more than 400 weather disasters where overall damages and costs reached or exceeded $1 billion — the cost of all those climbing to nearly $3 trillion. And when extreme weather hits, communications infrastructure often bears the brunt. While optical fiber has advantages over traditional copper networks — such as resistance to corrosion and water damage — it’s not entirely immune to mother nature. The question is not if a network will face a disruptive event, but when.

Protecting your network starts at the beginning. Decisions you make early on can determine how resilient your network is to mother nature.

• Buried vs. aerial: While underground placement is often the more expensive option, it makes the network significantly more resilient to wind, ice, and other physical damage. Prevention is the best form of protection. If going underground, consider using duct. If you are deploying in the aerial plant, it’s important to do regular tree trimming and pole inspections.
• Slack points: Planning out slack into the network makes restoration easier when cables need to be repaired. Slack needs to be placed at regular intervals and in strategic locations like road/railroad crossings and lateral poles.
• Fiber redundancy at the core: Building redundancy at the core, or other important parts of the network, can help ensure uninterrupted network service, so if one path fails, traffic can be seamlessly rerouted through an alternate route.
• Know your network: Records-keeping and knowledge of your network are critical when dealing with an outage. Consider creating a digital twin and making sure your data is accurate and the right people have access to it.

Part of designing for resiliency means picking the right technology too. From faster splicing methods to preconnectorized cables and terminals, your product choices can cut restoration time down significantly.

Plug-and-play solutions

Terminals and drops are often damaged in storms, and traditional spliced replacements can take many hours. Corning’s Evolv^® terminals simplify this process: if a terminal is damaged, restoration is as easy as replacing it with a new one and plugging in pre-terminated Pushlok^® Drops. Service can be restored in minutes, and the terminals can be installed in nearly any architecture, making them a flexible, resilient choice.

Drop repairs

Trees or falling debris frequently bring drops down and restoring them one by one can require enormous amounts of time and labor. A technician can use a pre-terminated drop or use bulk drop cable with field-installable connectors. Corning’s Evolv^® Field-installable Pushlok^® connectors change the game completely. Instead of traditional splicing, technicians can replace a drop in much less time, significantly speeding up restoration and cutting down the need for specialized labor.

Ribbonizing loose tube cables

When a cable is damaged, splicing individual fibers back together can be a time-consuming process. Ribbon cables, which bundle fibers into ribbons, make this process much faster. For operators using loose tube cables, “ribbonizing” can transform a nest of individual fibers into an organized single ribbon, allowing for mass fusion splicing and cutting restoration time nearly in half compared to traditional methods.

When disaster strikes, preparation is everything. Having alarms in place, routine inspections, and battery health checks can help ensure issues are detected early on before they turn into larger outages. Likewise, having backup generators, utility agreements, and resource sharing plans in place can prevent communities from becoming isolated if the power grid goes down. And when making repairs, it’s important to prioritize critical sites like hospitals, emergency shelters, and first responder facilities to keep communities safe.

For emergency contingency plans to work, even seemingly minor details need to be considered — down to where crews can find fuel, food, and housing to sustain extended recovery efforts — and these plans need to be tested and reviewed annually to keep them sharp.

Some leading providers have pioneered the use of drones, robots, and dedicated rapid-response teams — practices worth adapting across the industry. To keep communities safe and connected, neighbor and industry coordination is also essential, whether it’s through mutual aid agreements or sharing best practices.

No network is invincible, but with proper preparation, operators can speed up recovery and restore service in no time. As natural disasters grow in frequency and severity, pre-planning isn’t optional — it’s essential. By combining smart design, resilient technology, and coordinated recovery strategies, operators can build disaster-ready networks that keep communities safe, connected, and supported when it matters most.