AT&T increases bounty on fiber vandals to $250K
AT&T has increased its reward to $250,000 for information that will help law enforcement arrest and convict vandals who cut the company's fiber-optic cables in San Jose, Calif., on Thursday, the company said in its Twitter feed.
On Thursday, AT&T said it would offer a $100,000 reward for anyone who has information that could lead to the arrest or conviction of anyone involved in cutting the fiber.
Thousands of wireless, Internet, and landline phone customers were without service beginning at about 1:30 a.m. PDT on Thursday after vandals had cut four fiber-optic cables owned by AT&T. A cable in San Carlos, Calif., owned by Sprint Nextel, had also been severed about two later. But Sprint spokeswoman Crystal Davis said the company was able to reroute most of that traffic onto another fiber link and for the most part, service was not disrupted.
Wireless customers from almost every carrier were also without service, because AT&T's network is used to connect cell towers back to these carriers' respective national networks. Officials also said that residents in the San Jose/Santa Clara region were without emergency 911 service for much of the day.
AT&T said early Friday morning that service had been restored to all of its customers.
San Jose Police Sgt. Ronnie Lopez said that the fiber cut appeared to be deliberate and the police department is treating it as a felony act of vandalism. The FBI has also been briefed on the case, although Lopez said that for now local officials are handling the investigation.
Anyone with information or tips is being asked to call 408-947-STOP.
Marguerite Reardon has been a CNET News reporter since 2004, covering cell phone services, broadband, citywide Wi-Fi, the Net neutrality debate, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the phone companies. E-mail Maggie. 
I think it safe to assume that whomever did it had insider knowledge in order to know exactly what and where to cut to kill the entire system.
Interestingly, I am in the intrusion deteciton business and there are mature electronic means currently available to detect the initial intrusions into the cable vaults and to detect the (pre-event) distrubances of the fiber even over very long distances. Future Fibre Technologies a well respected global player in the outdoor security business manufactures Secure Link www.fft-usa.com which uses just a few of the existing dark fibers in the communications bundle to "self-protect" the entire cable and the pipes or conduits along the path even over runs of 50 miles with out any field electronics or power required. Any attempt to disturb the cable (well before any cut has even taken place) is reported over the fiber itself to a central monitoring point where precise location data down to about 50 feet) is displayed along with exact GPS cooridinates. Company personnel or law enforcement can then respond in time to esily stop the event. This kind of ultra-expensive prank, an innocent accident by an unknowing contractor or even actual terrorist activities can be easily and cost effectively detected and monitored well before any damage or disruption of service occurs. Fuuny that so much emphasis is being placed on cybersecurity when a simple pair of wire cuttters and access to a man hole can bring the whole system down. Europe and even South America have recognized these huge gaps in the protection of public networks and these regions have already begun to address these threats (including oil, gas and water pipelines) even ahead of us.
1. OJ will look for 'real' killers.
2. Microsoft offers bounty for catching virus writers.
Good luck with that, AT&T, really.
..and are you even capable of posting without bringing up Microsoft somehow? Still pathetically stuck on your anti-Microsoft vendetta aren't you?
CWA workers take great pride in their work and the network they have built and protect. They would noy do this. Where would it get them?
It is probably just vandalism. Contrary to the company's statement, It is very easy to get into a manhole. Any road worker can get in with a crowbar and a shovel and in most cases can pry up the cover with just a shovel. Manhole hooks are abundantly available. Don't use your anti-union sentiment to belittle hard woirking people and accuse them of crimes.
I hate to say it, but this does sounds like the Unions or someone else who is 'in the know' and helped to install these lines are the one who did this.
Funny, Future Fibre Technologies www.fft-usa.com (and a couple of others) make a laser-based device that attachs to one end of the fiber run and can locate any (even minor) disturbances and provide GPS latitude and longitude to responders as an early warning The same technology protects pipelines and fences at some of the worlds most secure facilities. It's time the telcoms woke up to this threat. These kind of catostrophic distruptions perpetrated so easily won't be acceptable by the public should they occur with any regularity. Having any civil infratructure down for any length of time is so third world, the public will not tolerate it I'm sure.
Health-care should be health-care and any legitimate insurance company should cover it's part regardless of where you go.
I wonder if AT&T has anymore fiber optic cables buried underground...
Maybe they should up the reward before it gets really expensive, or perhaps they should figure out how they pisssssed somebody off and stop doing that.
They may very well have. I wouldn't be the least bit shocked to find it's somebody that AT&T laid off. How ironic, no money to pay people but it's OK to shell out $250k of stockholder funds to do something that law enforcement is aready paid to do.
The fact is that most of the dollars do go to shareholders..... but only the people who own MILLIONS of dollars worth of shares, and therefore will get a disproportionate amount of this money, which should be required to be put back into hiring more workers, increasing the services of AT&T, etc.
As I have said before: 99% of the money given to people as money from owning stock N E V E R gets back into the economy at large.
F- = Customer Service. Horrendous Call Center in Bangalore India or Manila. Employees are Barely Audible. They can?t under stand what you?re trying to tell them and just use a script, They cant articulate a solution for your problem and talk like they have a mouth full of marbles.
F-= Network Redundancy. They should have Dual-ring sonet redundancy. Cable cuts happen all the time, THE OTHER RING SHOULD BE ROUTED AND BARRIED AT A DIFFERENT LOCATION. They should be able to reroute critical government services, but were unable to do so.
F-= Privacy of customer information. Call centers in other countries, some 3rd work countries who pirate 90% of intellectual property and media property have your personal Information.
F-= DSL Service, Just wait until you on hold with a call center then given a script or promise for credit for an outage, Simple fact that when SBC bought ATT then they bought Bell South, they have to many call centers that DO NOT COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER.
B-ATT Wireless Cell. They have the best phones available from, I-Phone to Samsung Texture bad thing you have to buy a 2 year contract. The roll over minuets is great also however they do expire.
D+= ATT Land Lines. They rip people off with to many bogus charges my Grand Parents were paying 80 per month for the last 30 years, I had there land line ported to there cell phone to save them money. Then ATT calls with the sales pitch, they should of done that 10 years ago.
B+ ATT U-Verse. It is not true Fiber to the house, it is fiber to the pole then copper to the house. Simple fact that Cable going to your house has more More capacity for bandwith for YOUR house then Cat5. There DVR is great and can record up to 4 channels at once Vs. Cables 2 channels However who watches so much TV.
B+ Price or Value of service. The only problem with ATT they try to lock you into a contract like they do with there Wireless, DSL, U-Vers or Dish network.
- by Thumper01060 April 14, 2009 11:39 AM PDT
- Those who think that you have to have insider knowledge to do this much damage are speculating without a thorough knowledge of the facts. Who said this was on a ring? Much of AT&T's facilities are not on rings at all. Also there were several other cuts that didn't do this kind of damage. You can't have it both ways. They knew what to cut here but not elsewhere? The fact is that any cut anywhere may cause a huge outage because it's almost impossible to know the routing of a particular service on a cable. Also, this cut involved several other companies. Very often diversity comes by having part odf a service through one company and part through others but it is not always possible to have completely diverse facilities where they just don't exist. Another thing is that rings can only self heal if nothing else in the network is down at the same time that has taken part of the ring for restoration. AT&T used to dispatch on all troubles but now to save money they only dispatch on priority one outages. If a protection line is down there is no dispatch after hours. Don't believe AT&T when they say their stuff is all diverse. I know of one local ring that goes through 14 towns and several different companie's facilities to complete it's diversity. Some is buried some is arial cable company facilities. There are troubles on this ring all of the time but better facilities jsut don't exist.
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(37 Comments)As I said in a post somewhere earlier. I've worked for AT&T for 42 years and have never met a union employee who would not turn in a fellow worker for vandalism. The person who did it is obviously disturbed wheter they are union or not but CWA oes not condone vandalism.