Fiber optic is not affected unless the storm takes out the electric.
Which happens.
No system is 100% reliable.
Reliability costs
Fiber optic is regularly savaged by sloppy work crews digging without calling to have utilities marked. My fiber was out for a day for that very reason.
I have had a good 1 Gbps symmetric fiber since 2019. In the last year. Google installed their services right next to my existing service. I wired my house with CAT6 including all the way to the fiber drop. I put in a small UPS for the POE power to the fiber interface. I upgraded my router and router UPS. Aside from the physical damage by the street repair crews, the service has been outstanding.
Google has deployed in my city just north of Pocatello. They offer up to 8 Gbps service. I have a router that can handle 10 Gbps on the WAN port. My CAT6 between router and fiber drop is inadequate to handle the 8 Gbps and the rest of my internet network and switches are 1 Gbps/CAT6. Only a few of the newest devices have 2.5 Gbps interfaces. The Google offering is overkill for my household.
Usually the fiber optic systems have battery backups. Ours does, about a mile down the road, IIRC. There’s also a backup battery just for the module in our house. When it failed, I just asked the rural telephone company that is our ISP for a new battery. They dropped it off @ my back door when I was away - then couldn’t decide if I needed to return the old one or not. They finally decide “not” and it’s a paperweight now. ;-)
I’d like to know how the article writer came up with $100,000 per customer for installation of fiber optic to a residence. Where was that, in the Absaroka Mountains?
(Then again, if environmental impact statements are required for each residence, I could believe it!)