Some Londoners Cut Off As Failed Copper Thieves Take Fiber 184
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:There's a solution you know (Score:4, Informative)
Standard UK cable theft techniques (Score:5, Informative)
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.