Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
A criminal gang has caused a significant broadband and phone outage for thousands of customers on Openreach’s UK network around the large South Yorkshire (England) village of Thurnscoe. The problems occurred after the thieves damaged the local network while they were dragging the operator’s copper telecoms cables out of the ground.
The incident is understood to have started during the early hours of Friday morning and caused several days of disruption to the community. According to the South Yorkshire Police (SYP), the thieves appear to have lifted manhole covers on Nicholas Lane in the neighbouring village of Goldthorpe before dragging out and cutting the cables, although it’s unclear how much they were able to steal.
The theft followed only a week after a similar event disrupted connectivity in the village of Carcroft, which is 6 miles north of Doncaster and in the same county as Thurnscoe. The BBC News quotes Alison Carr, Police Inspector, as saying there had been a “spike” in cable thefts across Doncaster since the start of summer (inc. other cables, such as electricity lines) and they had already “recovered over £1m worth of copper cables“.