Thursday, April 23, 2009

Friday, April 10, 2009

How many manhole covers are in San Jose, CA?

From the Mercury News:
John Britton, a spokesman for AT&T, said it appears somebody opened a manhole in South San Jose, climbed down eight to 10 feet and cut four or five fiber-optic cables. Britton also said there was a report of underground cables being cut in San Carlos.
AT&T's contract with the Communication Workers of America expired at 11:59 p.m. Saturday, but Britton said "we have a really good relationship with the union" and that negotiations continue between the two sides.
It's my understanding that a single cut in one location would not cause the outage we recently experienced. There would need to be two or more cuts at strategic locations to cause an outage to cell phone, land line, and emergency services.

Knowing which manhole covers to open would require very specific knowledge of the Bay Area fiber infrastructure.