In addition to the traditional backhoe threat, as the price of copper increased so has the threat of people stealing telephone trunk cables containing copper wire.

Indeed. Here's a story from five years back: [http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2001/03/02_fiber.html} Fiber optic cut disrupts network access for hill facilities Vandals severed wires in effort to take copper cabling in underground conduit By Cathy Cockrell, Public Affairs 02 March 2001 | An underground fiber optic cable connecting the campus with facilities in the Berkeley hills was severed during the early morning hours of Tuesday, Feb. 27. The incident disrupted network connections for hundreds of employees at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Hall of Science, the Samuel L. Silver Space Sciences Laboratory and other Strawberry Canyon operations. Campus officials believe the cut was the work of thieves, who forced open a manhole cover on the hillside above Memorial Stadium to remove high-voltage copper cabling from an underground conduit. "The fiber cable apparently was in the way; they just chopped it out," said Berkeley lab Manager of Communications Facilities Ed Ritenour, who spent much of the next few days "running up and down the hillside in a lot of mud" to oversee repairs. ...

On Fri, 7 Jul 2006, Sean Donelan wrote:

In addition to the traditional backhoe threat, as the price of copper increased so has the threat of people stealing telephone trunk cables containing copper wire.

Yup. One of the most recent San Bernardino County thefts was right here in the Victor Valley... about 25 minutes west of my house IIRC.

Since Jan. 1, there have been 148 reports of copper wire theft in San Bernardino County, said sheriff's spokeswoman Jodi Miller.

Given the sheer size of San Bernardino County (it's the largest county in the US - about 2 1/2 hours from eastern border to western border, and at least that far from north to south) - as well as the fact that much of the county consists of uninhabited desert areas - I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often here. -- Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows Apple Valley, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room.