Fiber Optic Repair

Fiber Repair for Business Links

When a fiber link fails, the damage usually shows up all at once: every register, phone, access point and computer behind one closet or one building drops off the network while the rest of the site keeps working. Chain repairs fiber for stores, restaurants, offices, warehouses, campuses and multi-site operators across Maryland, Virginia, Washington, DC, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

We're licensed and insured, we do our own fusion splicing in-house, and every repaired strand is loss tested before the link goes back into service. Fiber repair is part of our fiber optic work and our service and maintenance calls.

What We Repair

• Fiber cut by digging, fence posts or sign installs along an underground route
• Cable crushed in a ceiling, riser or cable tray by other trades
• Fiber pulled out of a splice tray or broken at a yanked patch cord
• Dirty or damaged connectors, and patch cords that are pinched or kinked
• Bad terminations inside rack-mount and wall-mount enclosures
• Fiber another contractor installed, with or without records

Finding the Bad Strands

A repair starts with knowing which fibers are down and where. We work through it in order:

• Test each strand. A light source and power meter on every strand shows which fibers are dead, which pass light, and which read higher loss than they should.
• Inspect and clean the ends. We check the connectors, patch cords and enclosures at both ends, since a dirty connector or a damaged patch cord can look like a broken cable.
• Walk the route. We follow the path for signs of damage: fresh digging outdoors, new work in ceilings and risers indoors, or a fiber pulled loose inside an enclosure.
• Test by segment. When a link passes through a patch panel or splice point along the way, testing each section on its own narrows the damage to one stretch of cable.

If every strand in a cable is out, the cable is likely cut or crushed somewhere on the route. If only a few are out, the problem is more often at a termination or inside an enclosure. Where a spare strand tests good, moving the link onto it can restore service while the repair is planned.

Splicing in a Repair Section or Replacing the Run

Once the damage is found, there are three common fixes. The right one depends on the cable length, the slack available and how much of the cable is damaged.

• Splice the ends back together. If there is enough slack nearby, the damaged section is cut out and the two good ends are fusion spliced in a splice enclosure.
• Splice in a new section. Without enough slack, a new piece of matching cable bridges the gap, with a splice point at each end.
• Replace the run. For a short indoor run, or a cable damaged along a long stretch, pulling new cable can make more sense than repairing it.

The replacement fiber has to match what's there: singlemode to singlemode, and multimode to the same grade. Our fiber fusion splicing page covers how we splice and store the repair.

Re-Terminating Bad Ends

Not every failure is in the cable. When the break is at one end, or a connector is damaged, we clean or replace the connector, or cut back to good fiber and re-terminate it by splicing new pigtails in the enclosure. We match the connector type your patch panels and equipment already use.

Testing and Records After the Repair

A link that lights up hasn't necessarily passed a test. Every repaired strand gets a loss test with a light source and power meter, and the reading is compared to a loss budget for that link. If test results from the original install exist, we compare against those too. See how fiber optic loss testing works.

After the repair, the records match the building again:

• Loss results for each repaired strand
• New splice points and enclosures noted and labeled
• An updated strand map, including any fibers that are no longer usable