Protecting the investment you’ve made in building out your utility infrastructure is critical. Your network is your revenue stream and ensuring you build with the right materials helps mitigate the risk to downtime on your watch.

We have seen enclosures that can’t withstand elements weather it be freeze/thaw cycles, sunlight, and even fire. Underground enclosures face all of the elements mentioned above, however, we want to focus on the fire protection needed to ensure your utility network stays connected. As rural broadband connections continue to grow, many of the handholes are placed in areas that can be prone to controlled burns or even incidental brush fires and wildfires.

Our Legacy Series™ and Maximus™ HD products are built to take the heat of these environments, and we have designed and tested our products to comply with the standards in both ANSI/SCTE 77 2023 and Telcordia GR-902-CORE. One of the tests we put our products through is that to simulate a brush fire as shown in the video. As you watch the video, you will see large amounts of accelerant (straw) have been placed on top of the handhole and ignited. After 22 minutes the fire self-extinguishes itself, and we are left with soot and ashes. Upon opening the enclosure, you can see that the inside, where your equipment will be housed, is safe and clean. Our enclosure protected the internal connections in even some of the harshest environments it can face.

To take it one step further, going above and beyond the necessary testing standards, we dug this handhole back out of the ground and tested it for load performance. Even after burning for 22 minutes, our Maximus HD enclosure passed the needed load for both Tier 15 and Tier 22.