Fiber Repairs, Relocations, and Emergency Restorations

Our Outside Plant (OSP) team takes great pride in maintaining the miles of fiber that stretch across the State. From site relocations, emergency restorations, new customer construction, and internal network projects, there is always a project keeping that team busy. In fiscal year 2024, our OSP team worked on 249 projects, which consisted of all of the above work and more. Here are examples of their work.

• Small maintenance repairs can include fixing fiber or equipment components daily, such as a broken pedestal. This work is coordinated through OSP, but normally performed by  Fiber Network Service (FNS) technicians.
• Fiber relocations (large or small) could consist of designing the relocation of fiber into a building for a customer building expansion or coordinating a large-scale road construction move where the fiber is located near the road work. There are times that fiber moves have short turnarounds or years to prepare. The short-notice turnarounds can place a strain on staff and represent unplanned expenses.
• One example is that our OSP team recently completed a fiber relocation in Denison, IA. The fiber portion of this project has been worked on for two years, where the road construction has not broken ground. For many construction projects, our fiber relocation work must be completed before the road work begins, to make sure there is no disruption of Network services for our customers.
• Emergency restoration includes the dreaded ‘fiber cut’, which can be caused by natural disasters, gopher/critters, mis-locates, or a cut at the fault of a third-party contractor. Typically, they strive to make the repairs permanent, but occasionally it's not feasible due to time constraints or other considerations and temporary repairs are made to restore the network and more permanent plans follow later.

Over the years, our OSP team has encountered a wide array of situations. Below are some memorable conditions during which they were called upon to ensure the Network's continued operation.

fiber repairs

Our OSP team found that someone set the handhold lid on top of the fiber instead of using the duct that was there previously.	Troubleshooting signal loss.  Hmm, I wonder why? It was those gophers!	A ditch burning caused a large blackened area around our site/fiber sign. The burning took out the nearby tree.

Here is another example of our OSP team at work. Recently an outage occurred when vandals cut fiber that crossed a large railroad bridge. To restore the service in a timely manner our OSP team had to string a cable along a fence. When looking at permanent solutions, it was either run new conduit and take years getting all the railroad permitting, build fiber to re-route around the bridge, or work with a partner that already had conduit installed to pull through. Our OSP team looked for options and the Iowa DOT allowed us to pull through the electrical conduit on the bridge. This solution dramatically decreased the potential cost of the project, which saved over $100,000. 

These examples highlight the interesting fiber situations our OSP team faces on a regular basis and the dedication of our OSP team to the Network, our customers, and fellow Iowans.