What has my fibre optic internet (transmits using light frequency) have to do with electricity ? Hydro good out miles/kms away – not affecting our household, yet my internet goes out, why?
In: Technology
Fiber internet works by converting the 1s and 0s that make up a normal internet connection into 1s and 0s transmitted over light. In the simplest form, a light turns on and it’s 1, a light turns off and it’s a 0. In most fiber optic systems, this is done with a laser and a detector that converts electricity into light and vice-versa.
Even though the cable itself carries no electricity, you still need electricity on either end of the connection to drive the laser and the detector. If whatever is on the other end of the cable loses power, the connection stops.
Now, most internet service providers operate on both power from the power grid and power from backup generators that typically run on diesel fuel. If the power grid were to go down, internet service provders have a backup in the form of both massive batteries and diesel generators. It takes a few minutes for a diesel generator to spin up, and during that time an internet service provdier still has to keep the connection flowing so they fall back on massive batteries. These batteries that they fall back on are literally massive banks of what are essentially giaganitc car batteries, providing enough power to keep everything powered until the generators take over powering everything. These batteries might only last a few minutes, but with the generators being there, that’s all a service provider really needs.
But. In some situations even the diesel generators might not offer enough power to keep absolutely everything up and running for the entire duration of a power outage. Instead, companies have to prioritize what equipment gets power and what doesn’t. In many cases, the fiber optic lines that are running to “critical infrastructure” like government buildings and cellphone towers are powered with a higher priority than individual customers. This means that occasionally there are situations in which customers will lose internet service (even over fiber optic cables) during a situation in which a power outage lasts a long time. It helps keep the critical things running for longer.
Now, this might not be the case with what’s happening in your situation. It sounds like your internet service provider just has a smaller issue preventing you from getting a connection. Most service providers have at least two different connections to the power grid to prevent situations like yours from happening. It just depends on what service points the fiber optic cable to your home passes through to get to you. Light can’t travel forever so sometimes there are signal boosters that require their own power, and something might have gone wrong. It all really just depends on the infrastructure of your particular service provider.
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