Hurricane Ida prompts AT&T to swap copper for fiber in Louisiana

AT&T is preparing to upgrade customers in three Louisiana towns to GPON fiber after Hurricane Ida wreaked havoc on its copper assets. In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission, AT&T said Hurricane Ida “significantly damaged” its copper cables and terminals in Baton Rouge, Denham Springs and Zachary (LA) when it made landfall in late August 2021. Immediately following the storm, the FCC reported 338,115 customers in Louisiana had lost internet, TV or telephone service, as had 16,106 customers in Mississippi and 478 in Alabama, though these figures were not limited to AT&T customers. While AT&T’s copper infrastructure in the area has been temporarily repaired to restore service to customers, the operator said it “plans to utilize existing Gigabit Passive Optical Network/Fiber-to-the-Premises (GPON/FTTP) systems to migrate all affected customers previously served on copper cables in the affected distribution areas.” More than 2,000 addresses will be impacted by the upgrade. The moves come as AT&T works toward a goal of deploying fiber to at least 2.5 million new locations by the end of 2021 as part of a longer-term plan to double its total fiber footprint to 30 million locations by end-2025.