When we stay without internet connection it is regularly due to a failure associated with the service provider. Curiously, there are situations in which nature makes a bad move on us and such is the case of Canada , who blames the beavers for a fall that occurred at the end of week.
According to the CBC, hundreds of people were left without internet access in Tumbler Ridge, a municipality in northeastern British Columbia. A group of beavers bit into a fiber optic cable , leaving the inhabitants of the town without connection.
According to local reports, beavers dug a hole and bit into a cable that was buried one meter deep. Rodents chewed through the conduit and subsequently tore the cable in multiple locations, disrupting internet and cable TV services.
Telus A photograph of the support team shows that beavers used this material to build their house . Repairing the damage represented a challenge for the technicians, since part of the ground was partially frozen . In the same way, chopping the fiber ended up affecting mobile telephony services
After hours of work, Telus re-established service and continued the terrain analysis to determine if the beavers chewed on more pieces of wire. At the time of publication of this note, no beavers have been arrested or are under investigation.
Wire biting is not exclusive to the beavers
Although the incident is a mere curiosity of northern Canada, the cable bite is not exclusive to beavers . Companies like Google ensure that their submarine fiber cables are protected against shark attacks .
Submarine cables are responsible for data transmission and a break would leave hundreds of thousands of people offline . Unlike copper cables, sharks are attracted to the magnetic field created by fiber optic cables.
Although these cables are shielded to protect their integrity, technology companies redouble their efforts every year to avoid failures. According to The Guardian, Atlantic cables require more than 50 repairs per year for failures attributed to bites, earthquakes and fishing boats.
In January 2019, a ship's anchor dragged a submarine cable until it was damaged. This caused more than 177 islands of Tonga to be left without internet access, forcing the government to enable satellite connections to cover emergencies.
A year earlier, six countries in Africa were left without internet due to the breakdown of a submarine cable that belongs to Oracle.
