Odorous House Ants in splice tray (Image: Rainbow Tech)

Ants going about their daily routine have grown increasingly frustrated with the presence of underground optical cables and other telecommunications equipment including lawn pedestals and terminating boxes and have become a growing problem for telecom companies that can blame local outages on their activities.

In the last month, Frontier, Windstream, AT&T, and Verizon all suffered outages directly attributed to insect activity. In most cases, the damage is unintentional — the insects use enclosed spaces like lawn pedestals and equipment cabinets as a handy home. Material brought into the colony can overheat equipment when it blocks air vents, increased moisture from the insects can corrode or compromise sensitive electronics, and insect attempts to push wiring out of the way can ruin optical cables.

Stop the Cap! reader Geoff Fielder found his entire neighborhood missing U-verse service last month and learned ants had infested the neighborhood’s fiber-copper junction box and corroded some of the equipment contained inside.

“When the technician opened the box, half the neighborhood could hear him screaming,” Fletcher said. “He made it quite plain he didn’t like ants. His partner arrived with a spray can in hand and knocked down most of them and encouraged the others to retreat. The damage was significant and they were surprised it happened so quickly because AT&T technicians tend to visit equipment boxes regularly when they connect new customers.”

It took most of the afternoon to repair the damage and bring the neighborhood back online.

Earlier this summer, Verizon FiOS user Paul McNamara, news editor of Network World, reported ants had destroyed the fiber optic cable bringing him service. Five years earlier, ants caused havoc when they colonized a utility junction box on a pole across the street. In both cases, they brought Verizon’s fiber network to its knees for McNamara.

“When the Verizon technician opened the box it was filled with hundreds of ants (I had actually forgotten about the earlier ant episode, but he clearly expected them to be there),” McNamara wrote in a blog post. “And when he shooed away enough of the critters to get a look inside, the red glow of a stripped fiber optic cable was clearly visible.”

The technician believed the ants were attracted to a liquid jelly used inside the cable’s casing.

Ant damage to an optical fiber cable (Image: Draka)

Draka, an optical fiber supplier dealing with complaints about insect damage, reports the ants it encounters are not seeking out optical cables. They just don’t appreciate when those cables get in their way.

The company ran test ant farms where they intentionally placed optical fiber cables in proximity to the colonizing ants. They were relieved to discover the ants didn’t target their brand of cable specifically — they attacked them all equally. This problem may require expert assistance; contact Marietta OH pest control companies to help you.

“Fibers from all four suppliers were found to be damaged by the activities of the ants in the farms,” Draka wrote in its study. “The ants did not preferentially attack Draka fiber in the competitor fiber farms, but rather they did damage to fibers from all vendors.”

Some ant species are less tolerant of cables than others. Among the nastiest are the Red, Western, and California Harvester Ants, found mostly west of the Mississippi. They dig ant galleries as deep as nine feet and have little tolerance for any underground cables they meet.

“It was concluded that the harvester ants often attempt to push aside any optical fiber they encounter if the fiber is in the way of their work,” Draka reported. “It was observed that they sometimes moved the fibers when they were in the way, but they were not seen trying to eat the coating or attacking the fiber.”

They needn’t do either to cause damage. The body parts they use to shove cables aside are capable of creating significant damage, starting with stripping the color off the cable and eventually destroying insulation straight down to the glass fiber itself.

Other ant species are also capable of causing indirect damage by their presence. Ant waste is often corrosive and a long-established colony can do significant damage to equipment cabinets.

The neighborhood bad boy, ready to chew.

Technicians assigned to dealing with insect-related outages encounter more than just ants, however. These insects often set up home inside little-accessed boxes:

• Black Widow Spiders
• Brown Recluse Spiders
• Crickets
• Fleas
• Millipedes
• Roaches
• Scorpions
• Silverfish
• Sowbugs
• Ticks
• Waterbugs

Rainbow Technology, a major supplier of insect and rodent control measures to utility companies, says a fast response can make a real difference. Rainbow said the worst offenders are five types of ants that have a bad reputation with utility companies: harvester ants, odorous house ants, Argentine ants, carpenter ants and fire ants. They have been implicated in service outages in California, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Texas.

Rodents, especially squirrels, also remain constant hazards everywhere – especially to overhead wiring. They need to wear down constantly growing teeth and utility cables are a perennial favorite. They typically stop gnawing after the insulation has been stripped off cable television or telephone wiring. They will stop gnawing for a different reason if they chew on electrical cables. So for those who want to banish them in their vicinity, they can now do so thanks to services like animal control.

Neighborhood terminal pedestals can serve from a half-dozen to 200 customers. This one is designed to service a small neighborhood.

Time Warner Cable is asking a Padre Island, Tex. customer to pay $850 to move a cable company pedestal box installed in her front yard by mistake.

Dorothy Harper’s home is located right on the shoreline, so utility companies have traditionally placed their equipment in a utility easement adjacent to the street. But Time Warner Cable, for whatever reason, decided to install their unsightly neighborhood terminal pedestal in the middle of her front yard, in front of her home, despite the city’s request that cable operators keep their equipment in a designated easement along the property line.

Harper has been trimming around the pedestal for years, irritated by its presence but infinitely patient that one day the company would do the right thing and move it to its proper location.

Her patience wore out when competing cable company Grande Communications expanded service on Padre Island and felt its own pedestal box would be right at home next to the improperly located one owned by Time Warner. Harper arrived home one afternoon to find both boxes happily creating a tremendous eyesore.

Harper told The Caller she called Grande Communications, which eventually moved their pedestal to the proper location. But Time Warner Cable proved infinitely more stubborn, even when the city got involved:

Edward Villarreal, who issues fiber optic and utility permits for the city’s Development Services, visited Harper’s property. He took photos of the cable pedestal and made phone calls to Time Warner on her behalf, without success, he said.

“It’s definitely an eyesore I wouldn’t want in the middle of my property,” Villarreal told Troubleshooter Thursday.

Harper got tired of the fight with Time Warner and backed off for a while, she said.

“Every time I drive up to our home, I am angered again at Time Warner and their negative response to a problem that their workers created,” she said.

Recently she called Time Warner again and was told they would move the pedestal if she paid $850, Harper said.

The newspaper’s troubleshooter intervened, calling Time Warner’s regional headquarters looking for a resolution and found someone a bit more sympathetic.

Jon Gary Herrera, regional vice president of communications for the cable operator said complaints about unsightly cable pedestals are common, but the company would be willing to move the one in front of Mrs. Harper’s home if the mistake was theirs.

If not, Time Warner has a solution to quiet chronic complainers. The company has been known to provide a rock facade to cover the ugly pale green lawn stump and make things more landscape friendly.

One reader had a last-ditch solution in case that did not work:

Make the switch to Grande and then arrange for someone to “accidentally” do a hit and run on the cable box thus forcing Time Warner to come out and place it in the proper location.