Bizarre and Annoying Causes of Fiber Cuts

For lots more on fiber optics and the colorful characters that lay them down under the sea, this old Wired article is a must-read:<p><a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html</a><p>("Mother Earth Motherboard" by Neal Stephenson, 1994)<p>"Everything that has occurred in Silicon Valley in the last couple of decades also occurred in the 1850s. [...] The only things that have changed since then are that the stakes have gotten smaller, the process more bureaucratized, and the personalities less interesting."

There's a joke that goes: If you need a backhoe, just bury a little fiber cable. One will be along presently to dig it up.

The former mayor of my city (he had been out of office for a few months when this happened) cut through the only fiber line coming into the area with a back hoe while burying a dead dog. Knocked out long distance, cell phones, and the internet for about 12 hours.

<a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/07/nation/na-black-wire7" rel="nofollow">http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/07/nation/na-black-wire...</a><p>Unfortunately for excavators not all buried lines are on the map.

He's out of luck with the squirrels. They love to chew cables of all sorts, and death doesn't seem to bother them.

<i>We can attribute about 7% of our annual outages to people using our fiber cable for gun practice.</i><p>Sigh. Prison terms please. Even just a month will do.