\u201cThe outage stemmed from a fiber optic cable that was damaged by a stray bullet,\u201d Spectrum told 404 Media. \u201cOur teams worked quickly to make the necessary repairs and get customers back online. We apologize for the inconvenience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spectrum told 404 Media that it didn\u2019t have any further details to share about the incident so we have no idea how the company learned a bullet hit its equipment, where the bullet was found, and if the police are involved. Texas is a massive state with overlapping police jurisdictions and a lot of guns. Finding a specific shooting incident related to telecom equipment in the vast suburban sprawl around Dallas is probably impossible.<\/p>\n
Fiber optic cable lines are often buried underground, protected from the vagaries of southern gunfire. But that\u2019s not always the case, fiber can be strung along telephone poles in the sky and sent to a vast and complicated network junction boxes and service stations that overlap different municipalities and cities, each with their own laws about how the cable can be installed. That can leave pieces of the physical infrastructure of the internet exposed to gunfire and other mischief.<\/p>\n
This is not the first time gunfire has taken down the internet. In 2022, Xfinity fiber cable in Oakland, California went offline after people allegedly fired 17 rounds into the air near one of the company\u2019s fiber lines. Around 30,000 people were offline during that outage and it happened moments before the start of an NFL game that saw the Los Angeles Rams square off against the San Francisco 49ers.<\/p>\n