Huge fibre-optic cable recovery

[Uli]

http://www.zululandobserver.co.za/Pages/M06story2.html

A private security company in Mtubatuba last week recovered over 2km of Telkom fibre-optic cable stolen by thieves in the Sokhulu area near Richards Bay.
Dr Douw Steenkamp of Nyala Security Mtubatuba, said his company had been working on operations to track down cable thieves.
‘We have been badly affected by Telkom cable theft, and decided to be more pro-active in finding the culprits,’ he said.
A tip-off led to an abandoned home in Sokhulu, where the massive amounts of cable were lying in coils on the property grounds.
‘We never met with any resistance and managed to remove three full bakkie loads of the cable, as well as some unspent AK47 cartridges and Eskom technical equipment without any problems.
‘There is still about one more bakkie load of cable at the property, which we will collect,’ said Dr Steenkamp.
The stolen property, said to have ‘massive financial value’ by a Telkom employee, was returned to the Telkom Mtubatuba offices.

 

[marine1]

The guys should be shot.
Good work, well done

 

[shadowfox]

Question: What were they planning to do with the fibre-optic cable - sell it to scrapyards?

 

[Nod]

Question: What were they planning to do with the fibre-optic cable - sell it to scrapyards?

i think they were going to lay their own infrastructure, and sell capacity to businesses, tired of paying Telkom's high fees

 

[Uli]

lol I was thinking the exact same thing...lol

 

[StrongTurd]

Surely fiber optic cable has got very little value to criminals. It is essentially just a long strand of cheap plastic. Or am I missing something?

 

[Tassidar]

Surely fiber optic cable has got very little value to criminals. It is essentially just a long strand of cheap plastic. Or am I missing something?

Maybe they (the criminals) are missing something.

 

[Gaz{M}]

They probably stole it thinking it was copper cable and then only realised it's worthless in the daylight.

Fibre has little to no resale value and you can't melt it down to anything worthwhile.

 

[kilos]

The idiots saw cable and pulled it out No copper

 

[thatdamnJoe]

Surely fiber optic cable has got very little value to criminals. It is essentially just a long strand of cheap plastic. Or am I missing something?

Even fibre optics(multipairs) have metal cores wrapped around the fibre for strength and to stop them from bending too much.

But they probably thought it was copper

 

[Flanders]

They must start manufacturing the fibre cable with an easy-to-read clear as daylight way of letting these numbskulls know that it's not copper. So for example, if the insulation looks like a candy cane, eeeesh, no muhni, leave eet.

But in my opinion, to get to the root of this whole issue, the buyers of scrap metal must be nailed to the wall for buying stolen property. It's impossible to patrol every meter of copper cable in the country so the people who buy the metal are the next best thing.

 

[Nod]

But in my opinion, to get to the root of this whole issue, the buyers of scrap metal must be nailed to the wall for buying stolen property. It's impossible to patrol every meter of copper cable in the country so the people who buy the metal are the next best thing.

What I don't get is, how can we export more copper than what we produce, but nobody follows the paper trail back to the origin of the copper going out of the country?

 

[Kloofvreter]

But in my opinion, to get to the root of this whole issue, the buyers of scrap metal must be nailed to the wall for buying stolen property. It's impossible to patrol every meter of copper cable in the country so the people who buy the metal are the next best thing.

Yes they should be nailed, but I'm sure the copper gets melted down or something?

 

[shadowfox]

They must start manufacturing the fibre cable with an easy-to-read clear as daylight way of letting these numbskulls know that it's not copper. So for example, if the insulation looks like a candy cane, eeeesh, no muhni, leave eet.

Of course, you're assuming they can read ...