It's one thing to build essential and vital national networks and rely on them for E991 and other important things, but if you don't DO anything to protect them, then that's really your own fault. Whining about how somebody cut the wire is like somebody who leaves $100 bills on their front lawn and then complains when passersby make off the the money.

And what about signal redundancy? Why can't they route around cuts? ATT's version of redundancy is to run the backup cable in the same path as the primary. So one cut from a backhoe takes out BOTH of them. It's frakking brilliant.

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And it's funny that the cables are just a few miles from San Ramon, where the former Pacific Bell/SBC California headquarters used to be, AND that it happened to be down in a manhole, which required tools to enter.

This had to have been done by someone who has knowledge of the networks. I mean, how many average Joes know where the network cables run, that it was underground, AND that cutting that specific cable would cause a loss of signal?

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"...their importance to the national security," and tampering with them is both a state and federal crime."

I wonder if the FBI could be called in on this? It would be nice to see that level of investigation applied, not only to find/convict the perpetrators but to send a signal that this "new" kind of vandalism--and, by having interrupted 911 services, terrorism--will not be tolerated.

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Sadly fiber cuts are common but not usually this catastrophic.

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Ideally, something like an IP network should be able to detect if a link is down and route around it. It will make traffic slower, sure, but it will still *work*.

What's really criminal is having a system which has single or even double points of failure. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that triple redundancy is necessary.

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