Charter Communications says a network outage that disrupted telecom services for thousands of Southern California residents in mid-June was the result of a deliberate act of vandalism on its fiber network.
The incident occurred on June 15 near Van Nuys, a suburb of Los Angeles, where Charter discovered more than a dozen of its backhaul fiber cables had suffered from clean cuts.
The 13 cables carry more than 2,600 individual fiber strands that provide phone, broadband Internet and cable TV service to over 50,000 residents, businesses and government clients in Southern California, and the vandalism impacted a nearby military base and 9-1-1 call centers, Charter said. Charter provides telecom services under the Spectrum brand.
In a press release on Tuesday, Charter characterized the vandalism as “domestic terrorism” based on how the fibers were cut, the extent of the damage and the customers who were impacted. It wasn’t clear how Charter sustained its domestic terrorism claim, which is typically determined by law enforcement based and requires political motivation, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The vandalism occurred around the same time that Los Angeles was in the middle of a civil emergency, with protests occurring near federal buildings after immigration raids in the city. Members of the California National Guard were deployed by President Donald Trump to protect buildings and streets in the area of the protest, a controversial move that further upset residents and state politicians alike.
Charter did not say whether the immigration-related protests and subsequent deployment of the California National Guard were connected to the vandalism of its fiber backhaul, though a source said the company did “not link the two” events. A California National Guard post is located in Van Nuys, not too far from where the fiber lines were cut.
“These criminal attacks on our country’s vital communications networks are intentional and cause outages that put lives at risk,” said Chris Winfrey, Charter’s President and CEO, said on Tuesday. “This is a pervasive and persistent threat to American families and businesses across the country that cannot be tolerated, and such life-threatening events should be declared acts of domestic terrorism and prosecuted accordingly.”
Winfrey said the matter required “immediate attention from federal and state legislation classifying these attacks as a felony, dedicated engagement from federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, and swift, aggressive prosecution of those criminals causing the perilous situation that results from these outages.”
Charter is offering a $25,000 reward for anyone who provides information that leads to an arrest of the person or people responsible for the vandalism. Tips can be submitted by phone call to 1-833-404-8477, or by contacting local law enforcement. The Van Nuys division of the Los Angeles Police Department is the lead agency on the matter, a Charter spokesperson told The Desk on Tuesday.
“So far this year, 10 states have already passed legislation declaring these cuts a felony, bringing the total to 28,” the Charter spokesperson said by e-mail. “Lawmakers around the country have recognized the gravity of the issue and are responding, but consumers need more. Every state and Congress need to pass these laws, law enforcement needs to deter the crimes, and prosecutors need to prosecute as terrorism when it happens,” the spokesperson said.”
The vandalism affecting Charter’s telecommunications lines is the latest in a pattern of infrastructure attacks impacting service providers across the country. More than 6,000 intentional incidents were reported during the second half of last year, affecting more than 1.5 million residential and business customers.
