Do fiber contractors need professional liability insurance?

Fiber contractors need professional liability (errors and omissions) insurance if their scope includes any design, engineering, documentation, or advisory services beyond pure installation labor. Common triggers include: route design and engineering, splice plans and network design, as-built documentation that others rely on for future work, testing and certification that carrier acceptance depends on, and project management or consulting services. Professional liability covers claims alleging your professional services or advice caused financial harm. For fiber contractors, this might include: a design error that requires costly rerouting, incorrect as-built documentation that causes a future contractor to cut your client's fiber, or testing certification that fails to identify a deficient splice leading to network failure. Claims-made form is standard for professional liability. Limits of $1M-$2M are typical MSA requirements. The policy covers defense costs and damages for professional negligence, errors, and omissions. It does not cover bodily injury or property damage (those remain on the GL). If your fiber work is purely installation labor following someone else's design, you may not need professional liability. However, the line between installation and design increasingly blurs as contractors take on turnkey fiber deployments.