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Some Londoners Cut Off As Failed Copper Thieves Take Fiber
judgecorp writes "About 37,000 Sky broadband and phone customers lost their connection, as incompetent copper thieves raided BT's infrastructure... and took fibre. Some scrap metal dealers will pay £4 per kg for stolen copper cables, but there is no dark market for fibre, so the thieves didn't make anything — which might be some small consolation to customers, some of whom had to wait for two days for BT to repair the inaccessible cables."
Destruction of public infrastructure should be it's own, separate charge, on top of the theft.
As someone who has spliced fiber: It's such a PITA, no wonder no one's buying it. I almost feel sorry for the NSA goons who had to splice all that fiber optic cable to create PRISM. A couple of days to restore operation is awesome. Kudos to Sky broadband workers who repaired the cluster fsck.
I had a giant spool of fiber cable in my garage (about 1/2" thick cable, 12 strand burial 62.5 multimode) - 62.5 is pretty obsolete. Guys come around garbage night picking up scrap metal from homes on the street.... I tried leaving the giant spool of fiber out before and they knew it was fiber so they didn't take it. I waited a few months, I wrap a little bit of 24 pair cat 3 telephone cable on the very outer layer, BAM! entire 180lbs fiber spool gone by the metal guys! They got a few feet of copper, and a whole bunch of useless fiber, I was so happy! Remember, spool was heavy, took up too much space, I don't feel like having Kijiji/Craigslist people come to my home - I just wanted it gone. Cat 3 24pair?... no tears shed over that either.
Great anecdote (or myth) about copper thieves from my area. Supposedly (and i've never actually confirmed this story, but it sure sounds good). Some copper thieves purchased a old power company truck at auction, which still had the giant spool assembly on it. They modified this spool rig to run in reverse very quickly, and supposedly, over the course of a few days or weeks, went along several miles of phone line on poles and detached the cable from the insulators, and left it lying on the crossbeams of the telephone poles. This meant that the phone system still worked. Then, on the final night, they went out, cut the line at both ends of their work, hooked it to the truck, and spooled it up. They took two miles of copper in a matter of minutes.
This story goes well with the story that some drug runners bought the same model pickup as the local power company used, painted the local power company's logo on it, and was driving on private back country roads to avoid the border patrol stations, pretending to be inspecting lines, or whatever, until some rancher noticed that the logo was hand painted and had a spelling error or some such nonsense.
of course, all this is probably fiction designed to scare the outsiders, but it sure makes for good entertainment!
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
That would be "Her Majesty's Pound Me in the Arse Prison."
"Her Majesty's Bugger-Me-Arse Bin."
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
1: tying a rope around the cable, attached to a quad bike.
2: 2 blokes stand at end end of the cable with sharpened spades. They stand on rubber mats.
3: At a signal (walkie talkies or mobile phone), they simultaneously chop through the cable bundle.
4: Someone on the quadbike revs up and rips the cable out of the duct.
The thieves then roll the cable up at their leisure, usually having about 25-30 minutes to finish the deed before the police show up.
It's standard practice to use vans painted up to look like genuine phone company items and for the theives themselves to dress as phone company workers
The phone company (BT OpenEeach) and UK police have implemented procedures to get faster response to cable breaks and for police to attend the area automatically - that is why the thieves have 25-30 minutes instead of the 2-4 hours they previously had. As a result several prolific gangs have been caught, but only 1 in 50 cable thefts results in anyone being apprehended.
SImilar tactics are also used to steal copper from the railway system - and that's despite cables carrying a few hundred volts.
Only the really desperate (and foolish) ones try to steal from HV switchyards. The tactic there is to throw heavy chains over incoming 250kV lines to short them out, but because power distribution systems use rebreakers, those chains generally only last a couple of minutes before they melt.
Penalties for being in a cable theft gang are esentially a slap on the wrist compared to the profits which can be made and even with recent tightening of laws, the penalties for handling stolen comms cables are laughable.
Given that railway cable thefts can (and often do) result in upwards of a half a million people being stranded (often in trains, stalled on lines), there's some traction on calls to make a specific class of offence such as "interference with transport network/endangering transport" (which also includes lasing aircraft) with non--parole terms of at least 10 years.