I told the telephone repairman, “It seems like we never had trouble when we had copper pairs; but now since you guys went to fiber, we are having lightning damage to anything connected to the fiber.”

Well, the guy was on the ball. He said, “You know, the fiber is in a copper shield to protect it from crushing; maybe it’s coming in on the copper shield.”

The shield was bonded to the modem, which had the usual four-foot ground rod driven. Next day, they sent a crew that terminated the copper shielded cable outside and ran just a piece of fiber, one strand into the house and moved their modem to the basement.

Now there is a length of 15 feet of pure glass between the incoming cable and the modem. Since that was done two years ago, we have had no trouble, though the storms are as potent as ever.