How to safeguard your internet connection this storm season

It’s that time of year again. As the mercury rises, so does the risk for extreme weather events across many parts of Australia. With Christmas storms come lightning strikes, and that brings the potential to dampen your Christmas spirit by frying all your electrical appliances.

If you live in a place where Internet access is essential, such as rural Australia with its big distances and limited mobile coverage, then it’s even more important to take precautions against electrical damage from storms. This blog post will explain how you can get prepared and avoid costly electrical damage.

How to avoid frying your Internet hardware

If your appliances are struck by lightning, they’re not going to survive.

A lightning strike hitting your Fixed Wireless antenna or Sky Muster satellite dish, for example, may cost you your NTD, WiFi router, handset, computers, and TV all in one go. This might be thousands of dollars in losses if it happens to your home network!

While nbn™ hardware is covered under their lighting strike warranty, other devices such as WiFi routers are unlikely to be.

Best preventative actions to take

1. Purchase a high-quality surge protector to ensure that your devices are protected during storm season.
2. Switch off and disconnect all of the switches in your home before the storm hits your property to help prevent any damage to your electrical appliances.

What to do if lightning strikes

If you experience a power outage as the result of a storm, don’t panic. Here are some things you can do:

1. Turn your NTD on and let it reboot for 5 minutes before checking the lights

2. Check the lights on your equipment

Fixed Wireless customers:

Check that the outdoor unit (ODU) light is not red on your NTD.

When you turn it back on, the power, status, and ODU lights should all be green. They will probably flicker for a few seconds at first, but they should not be red.

If none of the lights come back on, there’s a good chance you’ll need new equipment.

Try step 3 and if you continue to receive no response from your lights, move on to step 4 immediately.

Sky Muster™ and Sky Muster™ Plus customers:

Check that the light on your NTD is not white or red.

It will be white when you initially switch it on and while it is rebooting if everything is fine, but it should change colour in 5 minutes of your attempting to restart.

If the light turns orange or blue, then everything should be fine with your satellite dish.

Orange is a stand-by mode. Blue means it’s all active and online.

If you see a red or white light, go to step 3. If your lights remain the same, proceed to step 4 immediately.

3. Make sure the issue is with the NTD and not the power outlet.

Plug your NTD into a different power outlet and try to turn it on again.

4. Contact our support team on 1300 759 637 and let them know you tried steps 1, 2 and 3.

Once you’ve followed step 1 – 3, we’ll contact nbn™ with a request to restore your service.

We’ll do everything we can to get you back up and running as soon as possible, but nbn™ may have a backlog of restoration requests over Christmas, and there may be a wait for a technician to come.

Your best option this storm season is to disconnect your NTD when you know a storm is coming and have surge protection set up for when you’re not at home.

Written by Barney Lassen

Originally from Oxford (UK), Barney's headed up the Marketing team since 2016. Outside of work, you might catch him down his local swimming pool or walking his very-good-girl, Macey.