You probably experienced a direct strike to the line, as you say. There is hardly anything practical in terms of cost that can protect against direct strikes. Unknown to me, squirrels chewed my main electrical ground at the power line into my house almost in two. I lost it completely at 11 pm during a rainstorm. I lost everything* that was plugged in and running at the time with the exception of a Bosch kitchen range, which had only a digital clock running, and items on surge protectors. All the surge protectors through which current was passing were destroyed but items plugged into them were unhurt. I once, wrongly as it turns out, thought surge protectors were a waste of money. I have changed my mind. By the way incandescent light bulbs make quite a fourth July display under these circumstances as the filaments blow. ____ *approx. 2K replacement cost.
Good to have it anyway. Is it 1Gbps connection ? How much do you pay for this ? And to which point you have this speed ? To ISP server ? Try to measure various points with something like https://www.speedtest.net/ and report results here. Don't be surprised.
I just got a gigabit fiber connection ran into my house. It was a $175 setup fee and $65 per month through CenturyLink. It will be interesting to see the speed difference over the cable provider (which I still have) this week.