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."

Re:"Dark Market"?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called an "African-American Market" these days.

I did exactly the oppposite

[maxrate]

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.

Re:failed copper thieves in the US are deep-fried

[pixelpusher220]

repair the inaccessible cables

Well not to the thieves...

Re:failed copper thieves in the US are deep-fried

[Jarik C-Bol]

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!

Re:There's a solution you know

[jratcliffe]

That would be "Her Majesty's Pound Me in the Arse Prison."

Re:There's a solution you know

[sabri]

If they really want to live in a place with no infrastructure then exile to a barren island would be a suggestion..

We've tried that before... That island now has its own Fiber Network [nbnco.com.au]... :)