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Multiple Fiber Cuts In San Francisco Area
georgewilliamherbert writes "Multiple news reports, mailing list posts, blogs, and tweets are pointing out two overnight acts of sabotage in the San Francisco Bay area, with long distance fiber network cables being cut in two locations in the early morning hours. The first cut, around 1:30 AM, affecting landline and cell phone service and 911 calls in the communities of Morgan Hill, Gilroy, and parts of Santa Cruz counties, was on an AT&T fiber alongside Monterey Highway near Blossom Hill Road, in San Jose. A second cut, around 3:30 AM, in San Carlos, affected Sprint fiber and has significantly disrupted services at the 200 Paul datacenter in southern San Francisco. Rumor says that this may be related to a AT&T communications workers contract having just expired — but no evidence has been published yet in the media, and this could be an intentional act of sabotage by someone unrelated to the company's workers."
The NSA has volunteered to help fix the cables.
Someone should have told that guy not to cut and run!
*ducks*
Too mcuh open, ungaurded land. All it takes is a cut sopmewhere along hundreds of miles of cable to wreak havoc.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
They call them "tweens"
Could be someone trying to steal the fiber cables so they could sell the copper.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Infrastructure. Infrastructure. Infrastructure.
Please let me join your Fight Club. Look I know you have your rules and you can't talk about it *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge* but please just take me with you. I want to be a part of Project Mayhem 2009!
I was just at West Marine in NJ and they told me this was why their computer systems were down.
your base are belong to us.
then I hope whoever did it gets nailed to the wall.
Just because you're unhappy about something doesn't give you the right to go fuck with a bunch of other people.
There's a term for that, it's called being a dickhead.
In general, I hate people.
Sent from your iPad.
A loss of communication could only mean one thing: Invasion.
Demented But Determined.
Say it ain't so!
Talk about people who never left high school mentality behind. Before the local GM plant closed here in Atlanta my friend's mom worked there and he also took up that type of employment. My ex-girlfriend is a UPS driver but not in the union. All can basically come up with the same type of stories. The first rule I learned about buying cars, don't get anything made just before, during, or just after, an agreement is being negotiated. The second thing I learned is, if you have union buddies order the car and they will follow it through the plant for you... don't order the fanciest electronics but don't be surprised at what is under the seat or hidden somewhere.
Sabotaging one's own employer is old hat. Favorite car tricks were bubble gum wads inside of panels. Dries and falls off after leaving the factory producing a nice rattle. Snappy a few clips helps too - but only inside of areas you can't see or get to easily. Getting drunk at work wasn't that difficult, if you got caught you might get in trouble, for about three days... and most of it goes away. As for my UPS friend. Finding dog shit on her car or under the handles is a monthly occurrence. Having her truck break down more than is statistically probable was a nuisance till a friend who knew the guys made it stop. Real damage to her car happened once till the police actually showed up to see it. Then it was down to harmless; if dog shit can count as harmless.
So I put odds on it being someone inside, someone who knows the areas to hit, just what to hit to not cause an all points freak out, but enough to annoy his employer and possibly the guys who get stuck fixing it. Make the office boys work overtime and see how they like it! Yeah that will show them.
Really it will blow your mind.
Please don't think its a majority thing, the fact is most are very good and want a successful company and job, the twits just wreck it all because they are still in that phase of "I'll hold my breath if I don't get my way". The problem is the rest don't do anything about it for fear of being the next target.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Could be someone trying to steal the fiber cables so they could sell the copper.
Give him a break guys, after all since the cables are carrying photons they can simultaneously be glass and copper. It all depends on what you do with them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We learned another important detail about Conficker. Not only does it destroy software, but it feeds on fiber!
And that sound was the joke going WAY over your head at 50,000 feet.
The whole Internet is so fragile on the backend.
Could one day we just learn to deal with the 1000ms latency times of a completely satellite-based network?
(Yes, I know it's not flawless, but it would prevent a lot of things like this happening.)
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
.. a large cargo ship that got extremely lost and had to put down anchor.
...but how do you repair a fiber optic cable that has been cut? What is the magic process for sticking it back together?
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
Sound like the work of the Bastard Operator From Hell.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
Get some pipe and welding equipment.
Yours In Corruption,
Ted Stevens
Back in '05 when our local telecommunications company (TELUS) in British Columbia went on strike, some lines were cut and service for a couple thousand customers was lost. Of course, the first thing the company does is blame the union for sabotage.
Turns out it was just some thieves cutting the lines for copper, but that didn't come out until a month after the labour dispute ended.
Most likely the same thing happened here, thieves aren't exactly smart and most union employees would not risk the bad press something like this would generate.
Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
Oh wait, by multiple they mean two...
I'd put money that they will call this an act of terrorism if they catch the parties responsible. These folks are going to get pinned to the wall. Especially since they have disrupted infrastructure and broken the 911 system.
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
That was my first thought. Cut off 911, and other hiden alarm systems, then rob bank
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Depends - what do you plan to do with it? Web browsing? Streaming media? Voice or video chat? Networked games? For some of those a 1 second latency is only a minor inconvenience, but for others its a bit more serious than that.
There's also the question of bandwidth costs which, I'm guessing, are more than a little bit higher for satellite-based networks.
If it is terrorism from an insurgent...that's the most angry Canadian I've ever heard of...and we clearly need better border security for this new threat!
Activity Type Code Desc: PROGRESS COMMENTS
Activity Type Code: PROG
OTDR readings were taken by AT&T West and a cut was located 1600 ft from
the San Jose, CA central office. AT&T West technicians are onsite
working to isolate the exact location of the cut. There are 4 cables
impacted. AT&T Mobility has 61 GSM and 45 co-located UMTS sites out of
service off of Santa Clara Base Station Controllers 15 & 23, and Santa
Clara Radio Network Controller 4. E911 has 52 Location Measuring Units
down. The AT&T West Santa Cruz 11 central office (41,803 ATNs) is
experiencing an SS7 isolation and the San Martin central office (11,904
ATNs) lost it's umbilical and is isolated at this time. The Bailey
remote site (4,973 ATNs) is also isolated. Scott's Valley has 3 out of 4
SS7 links down. The Santa Cruz 01, Aptos, Scott's Valley, Felton,
Boulder Creek, Ben Lomand, San Jose 11, San Jose 13, San Jose 21 central
offices have trunks impacted such that all lines are busy and incoming
calls are receiving trouble messages. The Santa Cruz County SO (178,040
ATNs), Scott's Valley PD (12,007 ATNs) and the UC Santa Cruz PD (14,909
ATNs) are all without ALI at this time. The Gilroy PD PSAP and the
Morgan Hill PD and CDF have been rerouted with ALI/ANI. The Felton CDF
has not been rerouted. There are 17 DSLAMS and 4 ATMS out of service
impacting DSL service. There are 3 SMDI Links down impacting voicemail
service. Verizon's Morgan Hill and Gilroy central offices are currently
isolated. There have been 224,865 blocked calls.
At least this happened in a geographically fortuitous area when it comes to repairing the damage. I hear San Francisco has some of the most experienced pipe specialists in the country
Can't get through to ucsc.edu today.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
What we have here, is a failure to communicate!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
I dugg your slashdotteriffic post after I reddit.
it's a Federal offense to tamper with regulated communications infrastructure, five years in the slammer and (pitifully inadequate) $5000 fine. they need to catch these weasels, and for once, put them away like the Wacko bin Loonies they are. a garden variety thug in Fargo took that town down for almost a week with a hacksaw a few years ago, and only sat for a year to think about it.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
long haul comms always run on laser IR light. can't look for it with a broom handle (the smoking part is where the light is) because it's not THAT powerful. doesn't have to be for an eye toaster, though. even visible red multimode fibers should be hack-tested with a dull white paper if you don't have your power meter with you, that's too bright for ya, too.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Why would an ATT employee make more work for themselves by cutting a fiber line? Besides, they're still in negotiations.
Since a backhoe cut 50,000 fiber lines twice in two days in North San Jose. The phone company had people watching the backhoe to make sure that didn't happen a third time.
San Francisco bay area you say? I blame Revision3, since IIRC they are located there...
It's not multiple cuts. It's just two cuts, done within two hours. The two sites are apparently within an hours' drive.
So it's not some massive conspiracy, just a single person with a saw.
Interestingly enough, while our best-beloved governments are posturing about how they need to enact even more security laws in order to fight terrorism, a single person with a chainsaw is all it takes to deprive a large area of telephone and Internet service, including emergency service.
Could one day we just learn to deal with the 1000ms latency times of a completely satellite-based network?
A satellite net is suboptimal for day-to-day traffic, but it's just perfect for backup. I'm sure you'd be willing to deal with a couple seconds RTT when all the other links are broken.
But redundancy doesn't pay -- it's more economic for an operator to have no redundancy, and blame any issues it has on the trade unions.
(I'm actually amazed to hear that the emergency services went off too -- they don't even have backup for 911 service.)
You know he had something to do with it.
Issues of latency aside:
1) I don't know the numbers, but it seems like there would be a very definite limit (given the technology at any particular time) to how much data can be broadcast to an area over the air on a finite RF band. Given that satellites tend to cover large areas I doubt they would come close to satisfying demand.
2) satellite links can be just down through interference (natural or manmade) or bad weather. Fiber actually has to be cut. In a lot of ways, going all satellite would make the Internet even more fragile. To say nothing of the potential for communications satellites to be shot down by other states.
So no, I don't think we are going to go to all sat links. The answer to this problem seems to be just adding more redundancy to the networks so that cutting a few lines doesn't cut off an area entirely.
Mod points: Guaranteed to remove your sense of humor.
Side effects may include gullibility and temporary retardation
Communication disruption is a prelude to invasion...
I thought it was the same retards that cut fiber in Union City few months ago. Turned out those idiots were looking for copper :)
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
We buried our cables.
Aren't fiber lines buried in the ground, in big plastic conduit? Wouldn't someone kind of need to know where it was, and have the equipment to dig it up and cut it?
Yeah, I'd say it's pretty safe to say that it was someone in the company.
That's just my humble opinion. If I'm wrong, however, I'd think my humble opinion that they need to get their heads out of their ass and put 911 service on a medium that can't be as easily disrupted is relatively valid.
I prevent car accidents by driving a picnic table.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
SONET fiber is in a ring, so there are two routes to every box. These cuts were very widely separated and the outages affect areas beyond them. So I doubt they'd be cuts on the same ring and would expect there to be FOUR cuts, not two.
Of course maybe the telcos were putting in some stuff on the cheap, with the fibers for both halves of the ring going along the same path or using a tree rather than a ring topology and merely having redundant fibers but still a long stretch of potential single-points-of-failure (close to the same thing). But I wouldn't expect that of even a modern phone company. Service requirements are too high.
So I'm wondering where the other two cuts are.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Is this another USA shotgun thing?
Because you always need a smart fox!
I can tell from your UID and the description that you know the old school ways.
I never want to see another polishing puck again.
The new fusion splicers really do make it easy as now it is just strip the insulation back a quarter inch for the 62.5 (MM)or more probably 9 (SM), get a good cleave, and let the fusion splicer rip. Have seen a 24 strand cut fixed in about two hours, with about a quarter of the splices at 0.0dB loss (yes, I do mean ZERO) and the rest 0.05 to 0.1.
I think Corning Cable Systems (Siecor) also has a ribbon cable splicer for instant pigtails up to 72 strand, its been a few years since this happened, so not really up on the latest.
I've been in San Carlos all day, and not a hint of any network problems.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Mountain View (and some surrounding areas) have had a power outage, fiber cut and internet outage all within a 24 hour period. The spooks must be setting up some new equipment.
It's really *not* that hard to get to underground conduits and vaults where utility and telecommunications lines run. Anybody who can pry open a manhole or defeat a lock can gain access to these lines, as the type of utility (water, power, gas, telecom) is usually cast into the metal cover itself. Any deranged individual with a screwdriver can access these points and cause a major outage. Even someone knocking down a utility pole or above-ground junction box (both most commonly by accident) can cause a major outage.
Telecom and power runs are particularly vulnerable, as they generally share the same pole, vault, or conduit, as it reduces the digging and pipe laying that needs to be done.
When it comes to fiber and phone lines, the risks are pretty small, as cutting or damaging fiber is easy, and there are no high-voltages to worry about. Phone lines are the same, since the voltage is low enough that a wooden or plastic handled tool is all the protection that is needed from shocks.
The downside of technology is that the more advanced it gets, the more vulnerable it is to failing. The only solution would be to armor fiber runs, but that would not stop a determined nutjob from success and would be extremely expensive.
Might be worth it though in areas where this kind of anarchic behavior is present.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
There's just too many people with nothing to do.
were i work half the fiber is documented by a outside source to prevent this kind of problem lol...
This from a five-digit palindromic slashdot ID. God rest my soul.
William Thompson (class instance Lord Kelvin) had his way with the telegrapher's equations in 1850 when the lack of a plastics industry proved to be a huge threat to the first trans-Atlantic cable. Notorious dullard that he was, he can't possibly have noticed, either in his equations or in real life, signal reflections originating from impedance discontinuities. Not doubt he thought his needle was possessed by nervous daemons.
While I was quickly checking my dates, I came across this humorous early expression of the BBQ assembly gene:
http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/tech/cable.htm
Picture the 3200 ton HMS Agamemnon and the 5000 ton USS Niagara engaged in a stern exchange at the moment of truth. If the Americans handed the semaphore flags to an Italian crew member, they probably got the better of the exchange. It takes half a cup of tea to text back FU2 in Morse code with the shutter contraption. Your average hot-blooded Italian can compress the Sodomites Compendium into three gestures.
AT&T Offers $100k reward for capture of vandals.
Could one day we just learn to deal with the 1000ms latency times of a completely satellite-based network?
(Yes, I know it's not flawless, but it would prevent a lot of things like this happening.)
Satellite is a good idea, but wouldn't airplanes get all tangled up in the fiber going up to the satellites?
And I bet not random vandalism either. Come on... think. (all of the following was from local news sources)
Union or disgruntled ATT person? No... ALL fibers were cut in the manholes, and they were clearly labeled for each carrier affected: ATT, Verizon, Sprint, AboveNet, Nextel,
Random Vandalism? Done in two places: South San Jose and Redwood City, and Redwood City's lines were cut multiple times in several different manholes.
They also knew enough to cut Fiber rather than the Copper lines... no copper was cut, even though all of the manholes carried labeled copper as well. This tells me that it was not random vandalism either or a mistake by copper stealing persons.
This tells me that it was intentional... by someone. I'm also NOT a tin-hat believer in conspiracy theories, but this could easily be a quick test by a terrorism group to see how effective it would be, test emergency resources, and see how long it would take to fix it.
As others here have said... it's not all that difficult to get into the underground lockers and conduits. Hell... most are marked pretty clearly on the manholes what's down there (sewer, steam, storm-drain, communications)
Again, I'm not an alarmist or a conspiracy-theorist, but if you add this to the hacking of the national electrical grid a few days ago. Think of what could be done with a dozen or so people in each of a few key urban areas (say... 10 or so around the country) all at once, coordinate that with hacking the grid and/or other things. Oh... then add in Conficker or something worse that we don't yet know is there on a bunch of kiosks and/or infrastructure. Heh... there are what... 6 en-route ATC centers across the US, and they all use phone for coordinating between themselves and local ATC centers. Even with fallback procedures it could cause a short-term mess.
Well.. it makes me think. Not enough to stock up on survival supplies... but it makes me think.
Yeah, that's it, it's that network admin the city fired with prejudice and is now suing for refusing to give passwords to people who didn't have rights to them. He's gonna make 'em pay even before his day in court!
Look at the bright side. If some mp3's fell out of the tubes they can nail the perps for the truly heinous crime of pirating music. Isn't that an automatic death sentence now?
So remote the telco would lose money on connecting you? Well, that is SO VERY remote. It's so remote, 50% of the population lives there. Yeah, real fucking remote.
The saboteur went home, tried to go on facebook, but his Internet was down. So he shot his wife and kids to avenge this cruel situation.
Could it be retribution for the fact that AT&T got away with aiding the federal government with the warrantless wiretapping program that violated the Fourth Amendment and which the Obama administration seems determined to protect, continue, and maybe even extend?
No, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm a conspiracy factualist. There is a difference...
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
As much as I hate to cite it, this stuff has "security through obscurity". The only people who would know which man-hole to pop and then which cable bundles to track down and cut are in order of probability of having the knowledge and skills to do the job:
1. Telecom insiders - 80% chance
2. The government agent/employee - 50% chance
3. US-born (a la Timothy McVey) - 10% chance
4. An Islamic Terrorist - 5% chance
5. Average Eco-Terrorist - 2% chance
6. An Average Joe - 1%
At least, that was the point of the DOD funding. There was supposed to be massive redundancy so the data just got routed around any breaks. I myself have multiple ways of accessing the 'Net -- cable modem, land-line telephony, and wireless telephony.
How did we get to the point where an idiot with a backhoe can bring down Silicon Valley itself?!
I piss off bigots.
http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg16843.html has the email archives of the North American Network Operators Group. One comment: That AT&T has stopped provisioning protection fiber for automatic restoral is mind boggling. That our crack (or on crack) govt contracting/emergency-preparedness staff didn't demand protected facilities for 911 is another mind boggling issue. That there is no over-under wide-area back-up coverage for the cellular canopy ...
We posture and orate about being prepared for terrorist attacks and natural disasters, and then events like these reveal the reality:
The emperor has no clothes.
Yay, unions. "Hey, kids. Got a beef with your employer? Why not attack the underpinnings of modern civilization? Join the Communications Workers of America, and get back at the MAN."
Actually, you don't know who did it.
The same argument you give that it might be a "terrorist test" could very well be a "CIA TEST."
Since we no longer control our government, (can't get our vote counted, and the constitution shredded) we can't get past the state secrets and so we will never know, yet the only thing you can be sure of is some how this will be used to take more civil rights away from people and continue the propaganda and fear of an invisible enemy--the terrorists.
There's a lot of people pissed of a the phone companies. There has been for years. I remember back in the 70's, "Ma Bell is a Cheap Motherfucker" Now Ma Bell is a spying motherfucker, Ma Bell is a data capping motherfucker. To simply call everything terrorism, when in fact you don't know what the fuck happened.
I want my Constitution and Bill of Rights back, not this fucking symbolic shit we currently have. It won't be restored as long as this "crap fear mongering terrorist propaganda bullshit" comes out every time.
What has the fucking level changed from yellow to red? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeland_Security_Advisory_System
Better breakout with the national guard, fusion centers, fema, and CENTCOM. Better fire up the fascist media and drive more shit stories.
The very distinct place on the pole where the cable hangs belies what the cable is for.
It is obvious. You must have never looked at utility lines. Copper is on the top for the power.
Down the pole we then have phone (which is antique and mostly deprecated) and then, below that, we have the cable and fiber. There may be many different fibers for different companies. Here we have Comcast, RCN and Verizon. Verizon also does the phone.
The fiber will have 'snow shoes' on it every so often as, unlike copper, it is not easy or trivial to make a splice with fiber. So the extra fiber is wrapped up and put in a bundle which looks like a snow shoe.
A lot of fiber is dark fiber. During the telecom bubble (the dot comm bubble) there was a lot of fiber hanging as it cost less to hang the fiber than the equity that the fiber represented to the banks that were lending money. So for every mile of fiber that was hung the telecom could borrow more than it cost to hang, and they didn't care if the fiber was ever going to be used.
Anyone who has the ability to cut the cable, ie is aware of it, has a bucket truck or ladders, is most likely also smart enough to know the difference. Also, the power goes to a transformer where as the fiber goes to a box on the line near a pole. And the fiber goes to a cable that goes to a box on the house, where as the power goes to a power meter and then to a circuit breaker or fuse box (fuse is old school).
This sounds like union sabotage, really it does.
What a wonderful opportunity for the repair crews to install new fiber-optic taps during the downtime, either inside the vaults or anywhere upstream of them while the fiber is disconnected. (http://www.pastpeak.com/archives/2006/05/att_whistleblow.htm and many more references.)
Given the criminal behavior of the NSA to date in laying such taps, which are prohibited by its charter, and given AT&T and other institution's cooperation with such activity, how can we assume that any such network interruption is not occurring as an opportunity to repeat their criminal behavior?
http://twitter.com/attnews
I lost most all connectivity last night all the way up here in Santa Rosa (~70 miles north of San Fran) and I'm on Comcast!
The internet routes around damage.
Unless of course it's carefully damaged by someone who knows those routes and you can't get there from here.
Oops.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
And if you get a zero loss link you can still snap it and try again 'till you get enough leakage for your vampire tap.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Local broadcast news is reporting there were 2+ separate cuts in San Jose and up to 7 cuts in San Carlos.
Get the door, will ya? Tell 'em we didn't order any pizza.
Nope... I don't know who did it... it just made me think. I didn't say it was terrorism, just mentioned that I'd considered it.
As for the rest of your comment, I'll let it lay where it will.
Dick Cheney is making the rounds to preserve the previous bodily fluids of his most belovid Love-God Penis Symbol George Walker Bush.
Dick Cheney wants desperately to suck the precious fluids of George Walker Bush.
Market: San Francisco
Alert Details: AT&T has cables prepped and splicing has begun. ETR is 1:00am CDT.
For what's it worth, there was also another fiber cut in Seattle today.
The core thinking behind a union is extortion: Pay up, or the agreed-upon exchange of labor for wages won't happen.
terrorizing the internet itself!!
Marvin Martian was interviewed and demands that Earth stop sending communication cable cutting drones to Mars. If we continue to disrupt Martian services, the consequences will be worse than than mankind can imagine.
Doesn't this indicate a serious lack of a reasonable network design on AT&T's part? There are technologies available (SONET rings, etc) which prevent cuts like this from causing outages by setting up redundant paths. I worked as an engineer in telecom for several years, and it was my belief that all the major carriers deployed essentially bulletproof networks, and made good use of the available technology (and this was 12 years ago!). I guess I was wrong!
I do grunt work research in the ucb astro department, and I overheard some professors in the hall today complaining about these fiber cuts. apparently it affected their ability to download images from the keck telescopes in hawaii.
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch.
Funnily though, if they cut the wrong cables, they'd also lose phone connectivity between themselves. It reminds me of NOC administration: you can easily cut the NOC itself out by applying a buggy ACL to its backbone routers. Recovering from this mistake is every NOC's worst nightmare, esp. if the ACL went to a huge number or routers.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
"That's no reason not to have a massive multi-path infrastructure within cities."
I saw someone on NANOG saying these cuts were in a narrow geographical corridor. In their words, "your paths are 'one side of the tracks' and 'the other side of the tracks'". Dunno if they're correct or full of it.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
"...a AT&T communications workers contract..."? WTF does that mean?
...the Mythbusters crew have escaped blame.
When I hear that critical lines were cut, I thought to myself "I bet there just happens to be some sort of labor dispute going on with the union guys in California." Sure enough, you guys confirmed it.
My father worked for Verizon (formerly Bell Atlantic, etc) for roughly 15 years until he recently retired. He was "management." EVERY SINGLE TIME the union guys went out on strike, the vandalism began. There's a lot of political back-scratching going on when this happens and the union is VERY good at protecting these guys from any sort of prosecution. Fortunately, one time, one or two guys were electrocuted in Brooklyn (or maybe it was Staten Island) the last time around. They were climbing a pole attempting to cut lines. They successfully sabotaged lines in Fairfield County back in 98 or 99. They set fires in buildings, flooded tunnels containing copper and fiber lines, attack managers physically or damage their cars while they are working and these guys are "picketing." Disgusting behavior.
Union workers are a pathetic bunch. Very petty, very childish, very ignorant and are often despicable. You cut phone lines that people rely on for 911 services because you want a f***ing pay raise??? I hope one day a family member of a union telco worker dies due to an intentionally cut line. Maybe they will learn. but I doubt it.
Sorry. You are dead wrong. This is a classic move by union telco members when there is a contract dispute. It's way too coincidental this was done (in two places) just when their most recent contracts expired. CLASSIC telco sabotage.
I'm putting this on a t-shirt!
All of our sites were back up by 11:00 p.m. last night, but the latest update from our techs indicate that they found even more fiber cuts in other areas (Watsonville, Santa Cruz, etc.). The media reports I've seen have only mentioned the two San Carlos and San Jose cuts. This is news I just got through internal email. I'll be an anoymous coward to post this, as I don't need the FBI coming to my office to question me.
Sounds to me like an inside job. Who else would know where the fiber runs in Watsonville and Santa Cruz? And someone hit all of these manholes in a matter of three or four hours in the very early morning. A lone vandal might have driven between all these sites during that period, but it would be easier if two or three people were involved. That's a consipracy.
w/o any paper records to fall back on and a broken telephone/internet infrastructure, going to the hospital will be a crapshoot if all medical records are electronic only...
(as long as we are engaging in idle speculation ;^)
Yes whoever did this deserves the death penalty (or a one way ticket to Juarez, Mexico)...
I was in Santa Cruz at the time this occurred. All data systems including the credit card system, cell phone network and all land lines (incl calling down the street) were unusable.
I heard through the grape vine that it was quite likely an AT&T employee that cut the cable in 4 different places. AT&T is attempting to seriously lower benefits and wages for all of its employees, in this area at least.
At the time I thought the feds had just cut communications nationwide and were beginning the hostile gun collection sweep and check point set up! Another day I suppose.
I'm having a hard time to think to such a thing could so easily happen. Isn't there any line redundancy? Why don't we have fiber running along the side of every highway?