Shooting the Messenger, 'Net Style, UPDATED

Nobody ever thought that fiber-optic cables would be targets.

Internet service providers in the U.S. experienced a service slowdown yesterday after fiber-optic cables near Cleveland were apparently sabotaged by gunfire.

TeliaSonera AB, which lost the northern leg of its U.S. network to the cut, said that the outage began around 4 p.m. EDT Sunday night. When technicians pulled up the affected cable, it appeared to have been shot. "Somebody had been shooting with a gun or a shotgun into the cable," said Anders Olausson, a TeliaSonera spokesman.

The damage affected a large span of cable, more than two-thirds of a mile long, near Cleveland, TeliaSonera said.

And it was a 'big player' who was affected:

The company declined to name the service provider whose lines had been cut, but a source familiar with the situation said the lines are owned by Level 3 Communications Inc. Level 3 could not be reached immediately for comment.

Somebody will be making Class III jackets for cables soon.

UPDATE:

Cogent Communications Inc. said yesterday that a cable cut that occurred near Cleveland on Sunday night was caused by a saw, not by gunshot as first thought, but technicians struggling to replace the cut cable used a replacement cable that had been shot.

Crews rushed in to fix the problem only to discover that their replacement cable had been damaged by gunshots. "The original cable was not shot; it was the replacement cable," Cogent said. "The original cable was cut with a saw of some sort. Police are speculating that the thieves thought the cable was made of copper."

So these guys carry pre-shot cable as replacement goods?