After years of highly reliable service, telcos could see their strong track record marred as a result of copper phone line theft. Reports of such theft have risen in recent years as a result of the poor economy, coupled with a global increase in copper prices.
Traditionally telephone companies have touted their networks’ “five nines” reliability, meaning those networks are functional 99.999% of the time. That equates to about five minutes of downtime per year. A single incidence of copper theft, which can take hours or even days to repair, can easily drop a carrier below the three nines level. Chillingly, during that period, affected customers also lose 911 capability.
Five nines reliability, it comes to light, is based largely on telecom networks’ complex software and reroute capabilities aimed at redirecting traffic, particularly in the network core. Those capabilities are useless when a portion of the physical “last mile” connection between residential customers and their telecom central office is missing. Typically a carrier’s first notice that something is wrong comes from customers who have lost service.
The city of Detroit has been hit particularly hard by his sort of crime. As a 2008 video from the Detroit police department reveals copper thieves there have pulled wiring down from phone poles, burnt the casings off and amassed some impressive poundage, which they have sold to unscrupulous scrap dealers.
But since the video was recorded, AT&T has seen copper theft in Detroit decrease, a spokeswoman said. She attributed the shift to work the company has done with police and other utilities to educate customers and scrap yards on the problem, along with a recent decline in the price of copper.
In the second part of this series, we’ll look at these and other steps that telcos are taking to secure their copper infrastructure and help maintain their strong record of reliability.