Cable mining and bank network outages

News this week from Las Vegas about telcos offering rewards for information on thieves stealing live cable got me thinking about the possible cause of Internet bank Egg's woes this week.

C&W, which provides Egg's web hosting, says it was having to put in re-routes to take customers away from the fault while they isolate it. If they find that the fault is a section of cable that's mysteriously gone missing, it wouldn't be the first time it's  happened in the UK (though you're unlikely to hear many public announcements about this.) I've heard of at least one major UK bank that had an ATM network outage a few years ago and after much troubleshooting it traced the fault to cable theft.

And even though it's the copper the thieves want (worth up to $4 a pound in scrap value at the moment apparently), fibre optic cable isn't immune from the trend either, because the thieves can't always tell the difference from the outside. Quite often they also can't tell the difference between neutral, ground and live - with Darwin Awards-style consequences.