[Aloha]

Well, Howdy!

I'm a licensed radio amateur since 1996, I've spent about 20 years working in the cellular/telecom/two way radio industry, and I've done Motorola R56 inspections (as well as other proprietary grounding standards).

I respectfully disagree, a direct lightning strike almost certainly will take out gear at a cell site, even when properly grounded. Similarly a direct strike to telco cable will certainly fuse the 16-20ga wire in the cable itself at the first point its near a ground. Carbons, Glass Tubes, and other similar hardware will protect you in the event of a nearby strike (like to a lightning rod on a tower, or building) - but wont save you if the infrastructure is struck itself.

Generally the point of lightning protection systems is to well ground the tower, to draw the lightening away - so the tower and grounding system can protect the equipment - that isn't a direct strike by what I'm saying here - a direct strike would be if it struck the antenna itself.

Thats the perspective I have from cleaning up from strikes at well grounded and protected tower sites.

[Animats]

Yes, few antennas really need to remain operational against direct hits. Nor do they usually need to be the highest thing on the tower.

Data cables aren't usually up that high, fortunately. Power cables, though, are. In some areas high tension towers carry a ground wire between the peaks of the towers for lightning protection. It's impressive to see those systems take repeated direct hits without the lights even flickering. I've seen that in Florida.

Worst case is probably is an AM broadcast station where the tower is isolated from the ground at the base. WSM in Nashville TN is like that. They had a pipe ground vaporized and windows blown out in a lightning strike in December 2019. They lost the tower lighting and some transmission components were damaged, but they apparently stayed on the air.

The Empire State Building takes about 25 lightning hits a year. I wonder what their lightning protection looks like.

[bcrl]

Clearly you have never seen a phone line fried by a direct lightning strike before: the cable vaporizes and blows up the ground over top of it. Direct strikes are rare enough that most people will never see them. On overhead lines the neutral and communications strand are grounded and will take most of the strike over the twisted pair communications cable. Underground cables have some benefits by being in non-conductive conduit, but none of that matters if it's a direct strike. All insulators will break down in a strong enough electric field.

There's also the issue of ground bounce. A lightning strike near a house will feed back into the telecommunications and power equipment via the ground rod/plate. I've had experience with plenty of modems getting fried over the years. Some places are just lightning magnets.