Telkom cable theft: where does all our copper go?

Joe_the_GR8 said:
Please explain how a copper thief attempts to steal a High voltage copper line. Most of them die trying to do this while probably thinking it was a phone line....
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Just what i was thinking, the high voltage is enough of a deterrent, death penalty FTW! :twisted: ok maybe it's a bit harsh...
 
Actually the ones getting killed are the noobs in the trade.

You must see how the pro's do it with a bakkie and all. They tie it down and drive off, only once its completely separated will they start rolling it up into the back of the transport.

Worst part is they do it so quick that alarms + response is a waste of time & effort.

Edit: Oh and its not a SA only problem, its international. At least our guys haven't started stealing bridges yet.
 
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Joe_the_GR8 said:
Please explain how a copper thief attempts to steal a High voltage copper line. Most of them die trying to do this while probably thinking it was a phone line....
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Don't quote me on this, but I've heard that they pay some poor homeless person R500 to go cut the line. One toasty homeless person later, and that line has tripped, thus making it "safe" for the copper thieves.
 
its those bleddy asians again, first with the rhino horns and now this.

ITCynic said:
Please explain how Eskom is going to provide electricty to your house and business over fibre. While you at it, please explain also how trains are going to run using fibre to provide power to their locomotives.

Copper cable used for telecommunications is but one small aspect of transmission over copper.

Stop, think, think again, before you post comments !
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In all fairness this article is talking about Telkoms cable theft.
 
Elimentals said:
Edit: Oh and its not a SA only problem, its international. At least our guys haven't started stealing bridges yet.
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I can just imagen SA taking this one step further and stop a train on the bridge to take both, for a 2 for 1 deal.

How Does an Entire Bridge Go Missing?

Police in North Beaver Township, Pennsylvania are scratching their heads right now. Why? A 50-foot long, 20-foot wide steel bridge just disappeared. How? Apparently, some very bold criminals just up and stole it.

Stealing a bridge, as you'd imagine, is a pretty complicated crime. This isn't some 90s era magic trick people. The local police suspect that the bridge robbers worked at this for over a month. They presumably used a blow torch to cut the corrugated steel and then somehow moved the pieces—steel beams and such— to sell for scrap metal. That couldn't have been easy as each foot was estimated to weigh hundreds of pounds. But why oh why would you even bother stealing a bridge? Because the scrap metal is estimated to be $100,000. Oh.

But even knowing how it happened, I'm still left wondering, how does this happen!? It's a crime that's so far out there that no one really knows what from how and who from why. In fact, police say the bridge went missing some time between September 27th and October 5th. That's a pretty long range for something that big to go missing, right?

And who in the right mind would look at a bridge and go hey, I think I can take that down. How do they transport it? Who are they selling it to? And how come no one noticed earlier? (this has a more reasonable answer, it's deep in the woods and the bridge is an old railroad bridge). Will they re-build the bridge? Were the robbers really there for a month? Are they going to steal another one? Is this going to set off a bridge stealing bonanza? Hey, I'd actually like that. Life would be more exciting if more bridges got stolen. Robbing bridges is the new black.
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Source Gizmodo
 
Elimentals said:
Actually the ones getting killed are the noobs in the trade.

You must see how the pro's do it with a bakkie and all. They tie it down and drive off, only once its completely separated will they start rolling it up into the back of the transport.

Worst part is they do it so quick that alarms + response is a waste of time & effort.
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Maybe they need to introduce more joins, so that they cant break off such long lengths at a time, or run it along sewerage lines- I want to see them pulling those things apart to get to the cable. If I spot them fixing up the cable to the back of the bakkie Ill flush my toilet and wait.
 
Elimentals said:
Actually the ones getting killed are the noobs in the trade.

You must see how the pro's do it with a bakkie and all. They tie it down and drive off, only once its completely separated will they start rolling it up into the back of the transport.

Worst part is they do it so quick that alarms + response is a waste of time & effort.

Edit: Oh and its not a SA only problem, its international. At least our guys haven't started stealing bridges yet.
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Tell me about it.

We have been suffering under this very setup for several years.

They are usually gone 1-2 minutes after you heard the loud bangs from the short circuit that is caused when they cut it. This always happens between 2am - 4am when they reckon everyone is fast asleep.
 
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Elimentals said:
At least our guys haven't started stealing bridges yet.
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Erm, I recall the bridge going over the river before Umhlanga having the aluminium barriers cut off the whole time. After many a theft it was replaced with cement walls.
 
I would like to see some statistics on ow much South Africa is earning from scrap copper exports vs. economic damage due to copper theft.

I think they must consider:

1) Outlawing the export of scrap copper entirely. Of course their are ways around it, but once you have to start to process the copper you are not that mobile anymore.

2) Put ridiculous penalties on possession and export of stolen copper. If you get caught with stolen copper on a boat in the harbor your boat must be forfeit. Or something ridiculous as that. Copper theft should not be considered a theft, but as an act of terrorism on par with blowing up a bridge or a power station. And the punishment should apply to everybody in the value chain. The risk of accepting stolen copper must be so huge that it will never be economically feasible to export. The penalties must be at least in the region of 1000x the value of the copper. So if your scrapyard has a R1,000 worth of stolen copper the economic penalty on you should be R1,000,000. Because that is the damage that was done.

So I know the that the chances of getting caught is low - but you only have to target a small selection of people (the people doing the import/export) for this to be successful.
 
SteveO said:
...dont they have alarms for when cables break etc? Why not send out a rapid response unit with a security member. Then the break can be fixed by telkom and the security member can shoot back at the thieves.2 birds one stone :P
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What? Telkom dip into their massive profits to actually do something proactive for the community they serve?

Johand said:
I would like to see some statistics on ow much South Africa is earning from scrap copper exports vs. economic damage due to copper theft.

I think they must consider:

1) Outlawing the export of scrap copper entirely. Of course their are ways around it, but once you have to start to process the copper you are not that mobile anymore.

2) Put ridiculous penalties on possession and export of stolen copper. If you get caught with stolen copper on a boat in the harbor your boat must be forfeit. Or something ridiculous as that. Copper theft should not be considered a theft, but as an act of terrorism on par with blowing up a bridge or a power station. And the punishment should apply to everybody in the value chain. The risk of accepting stolen copper must be so huge that it will never be economically feasible to export. The penalties must be at least in the region of 1000x the value of the copper. So if your scrapyard has a R1,000 worth of stolen copper the economic penalty on you should be R1,000,000. Because that is the damage that was done.

So I know the that the chances of getting caught is low - but you only have to target a small selection of people (the people doing the import/export) for this to be successful.
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+1

...or our greedy public officials could stop lining their pockets and actually do something about creating employment in this country?
 
Johand said:
I would like to see some statistics on ow much South Africa is earning from scrap copper exports vs. economic damage due to copper theft.

I think they must consider:

1) Outlawing the export of scrap copper entirely. Of course their are ways around it, but once you have to start to process the copper you are not that mobile anymore.

2) Put ridiculous penalties on possession and export of stolen copper. If you get caught with stolen copper on a boat in the harbor your boat must be forfeit. Or something ridiculous as that. Copper theft should not be considered a theft, but as an act of terrorism on par with blowing up a bridge or a power station. And the punishment should apply to everybody in the value chain. The risk of accepting stolen copper must be so huge that it will never be economically feasible to export. The penalties must be at least in the region of 1000x the value of the copper. So if your scrapyard has a R1,000 worth of stolen copper the economic penalty on you should be R1,000,000. Because that is the damage that was done.

So I know the that the chances of getting caught is low - but you only have to target a small selection of people (the people doing the import/export) for this to be successful.
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The problem with your idea is that copper is a metal, and one that can be melted and changed with ease.

No way you going to tell me if a wire coming from a smelter came from stolen copper or mined or worse what % of the copper on a roll was made out of stolen copper.
 
Elimentals said:
The problem with your idea is that copper is a metal, and one that can be melted and changed with ease.

No way you going to tell me if a wire coming from a smelter came from stolen copper or mined or worse what % of the copper on a roll was made out of stolen copper.
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Agreed - hence the probability getting caught is low. But once you start processing copper you must have some infrastructure in place instead of being completely mobile. Plus I suspect there are techniques to taint copper wire with impurities as a signature (or maybe not).

The penalty should apply to anybody involved in the export of copper, even at low concentrations compared to the legal copper. So somebody might mix in stolen copper into legally sourced copper and then exported in bulk through a number of middlemen. If the final exporter is made 100% responsible even if they could claim ignorance it will be in their best interest to ensure compliance. Because some copper thieves will eventually get caught the chances of the exporters being burned is actually quite high so they will drive compliance. A system of source certificates will be a good place to start.
 
ponder said:
And next they will be stealing the FO cable for the kevlar cladding...
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Where do we live? Oh yes, South Africa! Then it has been happening for a while :wtf:

Actually I have seen the same stretch of road been pillaged time and again. Telkom is still busy pulling new cables and by the time they are finished, another stretch has been stolen a few km's down the road. Eventually Telkom paid back line rentals etc that were accruing and people refusing to pay as they were not going to continue this fruitless exercise.
 
ITCynic said:
Please explain how Eskom is going to provide electricty to your house and business over fibre. While you at it, please explain also how trains are going to run using fibre to provide power to their locomotives.

Copper cable used for telecommunications is but one small aspect of transmission over copper.

Stop, think, think again, before you post comments !
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In the context of the article Eskom and Spoornet are not under discussion. We're talking telecommunication and Telkom's copper theft! But, you are correct if we include power distribution! The fact is the copper thieves target Telkom because their copper network is low voltage(read non-fatal)... trying to steal a Eskom 11, 66 or 128 Kv cable is more often than not a shockingly fatal experience! In my 10 years at CT Council, I got to see photo's of a quite a few failed power cable thefts! Crispy!
 
Ban the export of copper... hike the penalties attached to copper theft to reflect the serious crime it is, and the immense damage it causes to the economy and its consumers. Increase the policing of this, especially in harbours and airports to prevent these swines from getting away with it.
 
McT said:
Ban the export of copper... hike the penalties attached to copper theft to reflect the serious crime it is, and the immense damage it causes to the economy and its consumers. Increase the policing of this, especially in harbours and airports to prevent these swines from getting away with it.
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Cant exactly ban the export as its one of the ways SA make money.

Personally I think a better way to fight it is to fight the cause, unemployment but seeing that its something that no one wants to address head on let alone our government its nothing more than a pipe dream.

If you totally stop the theft of copper, they will just move to something else to put food on the plate.
 
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