Lightening Surge on FTTP?

I am due to have community FTTP installed in about 6 months time. On my present BT copper line I have had lightening surges destroy my equipment twice over the last couple of years. To counteract this problem I have had my network connected to a wifi repeater in order to have a break between the BT Hub and the PC etc. Will I need to maintain this precaution when the optical fibre lines are installed? I live in hilly country in Wales (200 mtrs), and the fibre will be strung on poles.

Have been thinking the same - £15,000 of damage last summer when lightning hit here.

When the service was replaces I put a lightning arrestor in between hub and other devices - so far not needed. Have just (yesterday) had FTTP installed and am wondering as there are the strain wires in the cable along with an unused copper pair - possibility that if lightning hit there may be arcing or flashover, but with enough space? I am still thinking about it and would also welcome comments.

We had a surge / strike in 2019 that caused a similar amount of catastrophic damage as per MHC above. The surge back fed via external structured cabling (a Cat5 connected gate intercom). It blew apart all the equipment in the gate control, the intercom was grenaded. There was a lightning arrestor fitted to the link, but the surge flashed over and destroyed it also. It then took out two network switches (spot welding the chassis where they touched), the main router, and virtually every piece of equipment connected to the switches was either nuked or the network interface was fudge packed.

The ONT survived but was it’s Ethernet port was too crippled, refusing to connect above 100M. Openreach replaced the ONT within 8 hours of being requested to attend. So yes it does happen - but via the back door rather than the fibre side.

Robbob9

While I think the fibre will not be affected by lightning in the same way as copper, I would keep the wifi as a safety strategy if you are in an area affected by strikes.

If using ethernet for any devices remember to unplug them at the router if there is a storm / overnight

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