SF Bay Area Internet, phone outage called sabotage

Jake Widman
Saturday, 11 April 2009 00:33

Business IT - Technology

The loss of landline, cell phone, and Internet service for tens of thousands of South Bay residents was blamed on vandals who cut fiber-optic cables.

The outage has been estimated to affect more than 50,000 landline customers, both residential and business.

Businesses were unable to process credit and bank cards, and ATMs stopped working.

Residents had no way to contact emergency services, and some people ended up being driven to hospitals because they could not reach an ambulance.

And even cell phones didn't work, because most cell phone traffic is carried by wire at some point.

It turned out that the lines were out because someone climbed into a manhole in south San Jose and cut through AT&T's fiber-optic cables.

Cables were also cut in three other nearby locations, but those cuts apparently didn't affect service.

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