N.S.-N.L Fibre Cable Severed (Again)

GrumpyCanadian

A fibre-optic cable between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland was severed for the second time in December. The recent report says that Bell repaired the cable, and an investigation is underway.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/bell-subsea-fibre-optic-cable-newfoundland-1.7461963

With all of the other cable cuts lately, it seems like something is going on here. This isn't just squirrels gnawing your aerial fibre; these were apparently armoured cables of significant thickness.

Thane_Bitter

GrumpyCanadian Most boats have AIS so with a small amount of work (and a subscription to the data and historical data) I am sure they could figure out who it was. I am leaning towards negligence rather than sabotage, the cut was clean so it likely was pulled up, cut and then dropped back in. It's the sort of thing some lazy prick would do to save an anchor or other costly bit of hardware. If someone wanted to be nasty they pull it up, cut it and then pull up more of the cable, drag it around and cut out a nice long section so that it more than doubles the repair work. Takes time to do that so it increases the chances of being caught which is why I think it's just a case of negligence.

Still it's possible someone like the USA, China, Russia and a few others could have cut it, and done so without having to fish and lift the cable out of the water.

Dks01

Without evidence, it is speculation. Expect our telecommunications bills to go up.

px_eliezer_

Dks01 Without evidence, it is speculation.

Sounds like damnable evidence to me.

David Joice, the company's director of networks, said it's suspected that an anchor or a piece of gear, such as a trawling net, snagged the cable last Dec. 24. He said the cable was then brought to the surface along with the gear, and deliberately cut by someone.

"The telltale sign that we have is that there's almost like a cut, or like an angle grinder cut, through the cable," Joice said in a recent interview with CBC Radio's Information Morning Cape Breton.

"That's a pretty tough thing to do because ... it's just not like a fibre optic cable that you'd see on the poles or going to your home, but it's actually wrapped in steel. So it takes a lot of effort to actually cut."

(From the previous article).

Dks01

px_eliezer_ Not really. Informed speculation at best.

urbanriot

Thane_Bitter

Still it's possible someone like the USA, China, Russia and a few others could have cut it,

USA no chance but there are other countries who could do it to test the impact it would have and how long it takes for the cable to be repaired, for obvious reasons.

A lot of people don't realize how often we have outages caused by a foreign military and people often dismiss this idea as a crazy conspiracy because they can't wrap their head around a motivation; Remember that DNS server outage we had many summers ago that wreaked havoc on the East Coast? Now take into consideration all the fiber cables that have been cut on dry land and underwater, then combine these events together... at one time! That would be pandemonium.

I have no doubt that these are all aspects of a cohesive military operation to test the significance of a widescale disruption if all of these events occurred at the same time. Add to that the cut cables experienced by European allies and our countries would experience absolute havoc.

Hell, our society falls apart when Rogers does down...

I'm not saying I believe that this is what happened, I'm just saying it's not implausible.