I'm torn
Between "The cables cannae take it cap'n" and something about the perils of deep frying...
Strong-jawed rats brought down broadband services in the east of Scotland this week by chewing through fibre optic cables, Virgin Media told The Reg today in a statement. Virgin Media phone, television and broadband customers in the Kirkcaldy, Glenrothes and Leven areas suffered outages and intermitent coverage for a period of …
Seriously, catch and breed these little buggers and then flog them to the MOD ... weaponized rattus rattus with an appetite for fibre could take out your adversaries communications capabilities before they even know they're under attack!
OK, I'm stuffing one in me pocket and dashing off to file a patent!
it's banned as too dangerous in several countries.
It's an innocuous looking white powder which easily satisfies a rats reluctance to eat new things without a day or two sampling period, then it zaps them but good!
Available in many Chinatowns to discrete shoppers. You can also get white 'chalk' fatal for cockroaches.
Just make sure you wash your hands afterwards, very, very carefully!
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This isn't a new problem for VM. It was already known about when they were still Telewest in the Fife area.
This sort of incident has happened several times in the past. There are several issues involved and I can't pretend to know about all of them.
1) The rodents appear to LOVE the insulating Gel used in Fibre Optic Cables.
2) They (Telewest at the time) didn't use Sub Ducting to protect their network when it was built. It was deemed to be too expensive and therefore not necessary.
3) VM appear to have stopped the Stop Gap solution Telewest used. Getting guys to go out and put Rat Poison in the access points. Low-tech but it did work to some extent.
4) The latter is probably linked to the fact that part of the maintenance of the network was outsourced to contractors rather then being done "In House"
I just hope that
"Further damage was incurred on Tuesday afternoon and our engineers returned to repair the damage. We've now put additional measures in place to prevent further damage to our cables."
Means that they might put in sensible long term solutions in place