Climate change means more service disruption to network infrastructures: energy, transport and telecommunications. Many telcos already suffering more frequent severe weather effects. There will be much more of this, even in the temperate zones

Examples include: 

BellSouth Corp - Hurricane Katrina caused estimated costs of $400m-to $600m to repair the damage. “Hurricane Katrina knocked out radio and television stations, more than 3 million customer phone lines, and more than a thousand cell phone sites” according to the US General Accounting Office

Cable & Wireless - Hurricane Ivan, hit the Caribbean in 2004 and resulted in exceptional operating costs of £18m relating to business and network restoration, plus a £3m fixed asset write-down.

BT - severe weather systems resulting from climate change had already caused substantial damage to UK operations and cost the company money. 'The gales last winter followed Scotland's wettest summer on record. This meant we experienced numerous cable faults, overhead cables down & a whole car park full of vehicles ruined by floods' said BT chief executive Ben Verwaayen inJune 2005