Virgin Media suffers fibre cable theft

**Maggy** · 14-12-2010, 20:26

Link

Quote:

Virgin Media customers were left without broadband last month when thieves stole a mile of fibre cables.
It has just emerged that the theft took place in November 29th when criminals dug two holes in the ground in Sutton, Greater London.

According to the Sutton Guardian, around 1,500 metres of fibre optic cable was taken, disrupting broadband, phone and television services for up to 48 hours.

So what use would there be for that much Fibre Optic cable to anyone and how much is it worth?

14-12-2010, 20:30

i bet the offshore help line still told the customers to turn off the modem and restart

---------- Post added at 21:30 ---------- Previous post was at 21:28 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maggy J

Link
So what use would there be for that much Fibre Optic cable to anyone and how much is it worth?

i have no idea but i bet the numpties thought it had copper in it

Peter_ · 14-12-2010, 20:46

They probably thought it was copper and have since dumped it, pity it was not a live power cable with 30000 volts coursing through it.

kstone · 14-12-2010, 20:47

Muppets....Worthless..
If new it is worth about Â£1 per m if it is a 24-48F cable.
Old VM cable will be useless as it is pretty old.

djmagnifique · 14-12-2010, 20:52

Maybe they wanted to try and make a christmas tree.

nutellajunkie · 15-12-2010, 00:41

perhaps self upgrading? Who knows, but this is selfish stupid and moronic. I hope they were caught. Think of the poor people without their life saving social networking updates!

Sirius · 15-12-2010, 05:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Masque

They probably thought it was copper and have since dumped it, pity it was not a live power cable with 30000 volts coursing through it.

Indeed

Pierre · 15-12-2010, 08:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maggy J

Link
So what use would there be for that much Fibre Optic cable to anyone and how much is it worth?

Worthless.

This type of malicious damage is the bain of VM engineers, and customers.

Our pikey friends rip out cables, causing loads of disruption, thinking they're getting valuable copper and instead are ripping out fibre. Most fibre cables contain no metallic components whatsoever.

These can then take hours to investigate and days to repair.

The worst ones are were they've taken a knife and cut the sheath of the cable to check whether there's any copper in it, thereby taking out justa few fibres on the cable - they are buggers to locate, especially in built up areas.

Biggest hotspot for this activity is in the North East, followed by the capital.

JayAy · 15-12-2010, 11:56

Maybe it was a disgruntled VM subscriber thinking they'd get a better service is a new fibre cable was put in

Pauls9 · 15-12-2010, 15:32

Hey guys! I've just heard of this great offer on DIY fibre-optic Christmas light kits...

Stuart · 15-12-2010, 16:09

So, they have no use for the 1500 metres of cable..

Still, there are people who nick high tension power cables, and they are worthless to anyone but power companies, not to mention extremely dangerous to handle.

Graham M · 15-12-2010, 19:33

Generally, its not the current-carrying potential (boom boom) they nick these cables for

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stuart

So, they have no use for the 1500 metres of cable..

Still, there are people who nick high tension power cables, and they are worthless to anyone but power companies, not to mention extremely dangerous to handle.

agoodtech · 15-12-2010, 20:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by martyh

i bet the offshore help line still told the customers to turn off the modem and restart

LOL!

I reckon it was BT - Jealous/needing it for their new fibre rollout

Sirius · 15-12-2010, 20:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by agoodtech

LOL!

I reckon it was BT - Jealous/needing it for their new fibre rollout

Well they will have problems using it round my way with all the nimby's