Increasing cable theft and outages

Mon Feb 4 17:27:31 UTC 2008

While the conspiracy folks go crazy, cable outages are pretty much normal
and increasing around the world as the price of copper increases and 
thieves get confused about what cables contain copper.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20080203-1044-wst-coppercrime.html
Thieves hacked up and hauled away three miles of telephone and Internet 
cable along the twisting mountain road leading to the remote location, 
apparently to sell on the thriving scrap market for copper. Burying a new 
cable will cost an estimated $3.2 million, so monument Supervisor Craig 
Ackerman is working on a microwave link.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004141330_webphonetheft23m.html?syndication=rss
Qwest workers spent most of Friday repairing vandalism to about 6,200 feet 
of fiber-optic cable that was cut in Kelso, and as they were headed home 
about 12:30 a.m. Saturday they were dispatched to handle another outage 
that cut long-distance service to 20,000 customers in Pacific and western 
Wahkiakum counties in Washington and Clatsop County, Ore.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/hampshire/7184010.stm
Network Rail said there had been more than 1,000 incidents of copper cable 
theft in the last year, costing more than #4m.

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/06/07/vietnam_fishermen_vs_cables/
Vietnam telecom officials estimate it will take at least a month and cost 
over $5.84m to fix damaged undersea fiber-optic cables stolen by fishermen 
for salvage.