Copper thieves causing widespread fibre outages in hunt for scrap metal

Police are concerned thousands of Aucklanders could be affected by internet outages, due to an increase in attempts to steal disused copper wiring which is damaging telecommunications infrastructure.

Detective Sergeant Luke Blignaut said thieves were damaging fibre cables while trying to steal copper wiring from the disused landline and internet cables which fibre has mostly replaced.

"Often these fibre lines are run alongside the legacy copper lines, so when these offenders are cutting [them] they're often mistaking these new fibre lines and cutting them as well," said Blignaut.

"This is becoming a pretty large issue that goes a lot further than just the theft of copper," said Blignaut.

An estimated 10,000 people in the Swanson and Massey areas were affected by a recent outage caused by a damaged fibre cable.

A similar incident caused a Swanson school to lose internet connectivity during an emergency involving a student, meaning staff had to manually access medical records from local servers which delayed their response by 20 minutes.

While copper theft has usually been restricted to residential property, incidents involving telecommunications infrastructure are on the rise, increasing the risk of outages.

Blignaut said scrap dealers needed to work with police to combat the issue.

"If scrap dealers are accepting this stolen copper, that is enabling these offenders to continue," he said.

Blignaut said the copper wiring used in telecommunications infrastructure was easily identifiable.

"These are very large copper cables, and no average person who walks off the street should have access to it," he said.

Blignaut advised dealers that if they suspect anything they should contact police immediately.

He said as well as the theft of telecommunications equipment, knowingly purchasing it is also a criminal offence.