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Waipahu, Hawaii
At least 1,100 Hawaiian Telcom customers were left without service Sunday when vandals cut a cable providing the community northwest of Honolulu with phone and broadband service.
“Sunday night we learned that two of our cables in the Waipahu area had been cut in several places,” said Hawaiian Telcom’s Ann Nishida.
It took nearly three days to restore service to every affected customer because each cable required splicing 3,600 individual copper wires back together. The company says all 1,100 customers had service as of 1:00pm Wednesday afternoon.
Vandals sliced apart this cable. (Courtesy: Hawaiian Telcom)
Customers reported experiencing no dial tone and having no access to the Internet.
Even as service restoration work was underway, several residents reported broadband service remained intermittent until the repairs were completed Wednesday.
Although HawTel claims vandalism to their lines is uncommon, residents in Waipahu say vandals have struck repeatedly in the community, especially when street lights aren’t working in the neighborhood.
Customers subjected to the outage should contact HawTel customer service to verify a credit for the lost day(s) of service appears on their next bill.
The company filed a police report and asked Waipahu residents who may have witnessed the vandalism to report it to local authorities.
Hawaii has had several disruptions in phone service, the most recent happening in February when a damaged AT&T fiber cable cut off long distance service to HawTel and T-Mobile customers.
http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KHON Honolulu Vandals Leave Hundreds in Waipahu with No Phone or Internet Service 4-7-10.flvKHON-TV Honolulu reports many Waipahu customers are going for the third day without phone or Internet service. (2 minutes)
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I see cables like this (copper & fiber) all over the place that someone could easily access. Some are hanging to low on the poles that someone could easily cut in half, and others as in the pictures that are going down along the poles into the ground. At least some of them have metal shields that would at least deter someone a little, but even those could be popped off fairly easily. I’m honestly surprised that stuff like this doesn’t happen more often.
I am sure there are fiber cables easily accessible that feed most of not all of some smaller cities phone or cable companies.