BT, Scotland Yard form copper theft crackdown supersquad

Wrong Target

You act as if the thieves are the worst part. The heavy jail sentences should go to the scrap dealers. People doing this sort of thing are generally addicts and nothing will deter them. Heavy sentencing for people making the profit would work allot better. (If there is no where to sell it then the addicts won't bother - the possibility of jail for wilfully doing this would work as its more likely that the scrap dealer's will act in a more reasoned manner (Jail sentence for a family man just making bit extra money on the side is much more likely to improve the end results - you cannot reason with an addict.)

Humph

If only it were so simple. Only a minority of premises within reach of FTTP actually want it. If someone has only a landline in their house - which fits the bill for plenty of older people or what have you - why would you spend hundreds, possibly thousands of pounds in ripping out something that already works and replacing it with something new that the user will still use for the same purpose? They'll not be spending enough on their landline to recoup the cost of migrating them to fibre so those charges will get lumped onto the bills of the people who do use it for super-whizzy Internet.

It's a tricky business. Companies have to borrow money to invest in this stuff, but banks and investors want a quick return and customers don't expect to pay any more for the fast access.

In the US Verizon have given up on their fibre roll-out and will re-sell cable company connections instead. Elsewhere, large scale roll-outs are at least partially government funded. Imagine what Apple would look like if they could only sell their shiny bits of wizardry for the same amount of money as the humdrum products they are competing against.

Excuse me?

That's not the point is it?! Cars are pretty inefficient compared to pushbikes but doesn't give you the right to nick 'em does it?!

I don't care how badly designed it is, last time I checked nicking stuff that isn't yours is still illegal.

Huh?

So what's your alternative? Individual continuous cables from the exchange all the way to your house? Do you think that would reduce the cost of line rental and phone calls? The access network is a tree topology - that's not a BT design decision, that's how telcos do access - it's the most efficient model.

How many customers do you think would be affected if someone stole a 500 pair cable belonging to France Telecom? Or a length of power cable supplying a Virgin cabinet? Or the coax feeder cable supplying the antennas at a cell site? Infrastructure is shared between users in the majority of the network. If you nick a bit, multiple users will be affected. It's possible to provide a second, resillient connection but that will always lead to a cost more than double that of the unprotected solution. Should every landline customer have their bills more than doubled, or should the people nicking the infrastructure be stopped from doing it?

I'm amazed that anyone would post such a strongly opinioned view on a topic about which they plainly have nothing even approaching a clue. I'm also amazed that a poster on The Register would have approximately zero knowledge of networking - how is it possible to work effectively in any IT role and not even have a grasp of the basics?

shipped abroad

I was thinking about this, but it would never work. They'd just (and they probably do already) ship it abroad. No way you can catch this at the scrap yard :(

That "good start" is already made

Unfortunately there are a lot of scrap dealers who are still willing to pay cash-in-hand and accept obviously false names.

Those scrap dealers need catching and prosecuting, and hopefully that is what this 'operation' is about.

Ferrous

summat to do wif being dahn the dawgs, innit?

To be fair

...it's only the title that implies that they are only after copper - and that might be an intentional bad pun by El Reg. Miserable though the consequences of copper theft are, stealing cast-iron manhole covers is tantamount to manslaugher. Although I noticed that some scumbag had stolen the lightning conductor strap to as high as they could reach from one of the Ikea Croydon chimneys. I wonder what will happen next time it's struck by lightning?

Not if I "Cu" first!

(That was terrible!)

It's a start...

Insisting on payment into a bank, or by cheque...

Add to that a photograph of the person concerned and his pile of scrap, and a photograph of his vehicle registration, driving licence and the VIN tag of transit van too, just for good measure.

Then make the fine for handling stolen metal or failure to keep proper records somewhere in the bankruptcy region.

We'll be using neutrinos. Light is too slow.

Nail the thieving, philistine sods up! Nail 'em up, I say!

Bring back the cat!!!

Al

Aluminium is not a great replacement for copper. The GPO used it in the 70's when copper prices soared and government cut the available budgets. At a time of big growth in the telephone network the GPO had the choice of meeting most of the demand with aluminium or sticking with copper and only meeting less than half - at the long term cost of a greater maintenance load.

Aluminium isn't a great conductor, doesn't like being left outside for decades and doesn't like being bent. Capacitance, inductance, resistance - all are worse than copper. Its relatively poor electrical performance makes it poor for high-frequency signals (such as broadband).

If fibre's not appropriate due to terrain or distance, any other cabled solution will face the same challenges. In those cases a radio solution will almost certainly work better.