Cable Thieves Continue to Attack Openreach’s Cambridgeshire Network
The Cambridgeshire Constabulary has appealed for information after they revealed that Openreach’s UK broadband and phone network in the county had been attacked eight times since May 2023 by criminal gangs, which typically target the theft of underground copper cables and often cause significant service outages.
In this case the criminals are understood to have targeted locations including the A10 Waterbeach, A1198 Cambourne, Linton, Mepal, Soham, Somersham, Wickham and Wooley. “They will lift up manhole covers by grass verges or carriageways to access the underground cables, often masquerading as legitimate contractors. The plastic sheathing on the cables will then be burnt in fields and the metal inside sold on,” said the force.
The perpetrators of such crimes never have any regard for the harm they cause to locals, some of which are dependent upon their home phone service. But sadly, it’s not uncommon to see a spate of attacks like this hit the same area before starting to subside as the gang(s) move on – often as a result of increased public awareness, police activity and security enhancements (e.g. CCTV cameras, drones).
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Sadly, Cambridgeshire has long been a hotbed for such activity, with multiple incidents being reported during 2022 and prior years (examples here, here, here and here). Crimes like this have become increasingly common in recent years, driven in part by the high price of copper, although a series of UK-wide arrests toward the end of last year (example) – followed by some convictions – did seem to put a limited dent in the activity.
Detective Chief Inspector, Helen Tebbit, said:
“Cable thefts have increased in recent months with the high price of copper fuelling the activity.
Our patrols have increased across the county and we will also be working with partner agencies, including Openreach, to target suspects.
We are committed to making it harder for cable thieves to operate in our county and we will be targeting areas we believe are at increased risk, but we can’t do it alone.
We need the public’s help to report anything suspicious or anything they see that might not see quite right, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem. Once call could make all the difference and potentially stop cables being stolen.”
Richard Ginnaw, Openreach, added:
“The loss of a phone line can affect really important services, including healthcare, as well as the ability to contact emergency services. It’s also pulling our engineers away from other work. Repairing the damage typically takes days, if not weeks, costing us thousands of pounds. We’re working closely with the police and we’re really grateful for their effort and support.”
The rollout of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP lines should, eventually, help to reduce such thefts as fibre has no major value to thieves. However, this won’t completely stop the problem from occurring in the short to medium-term because fibre and copper cables often share some of the same ducts, with thieves sometimes mistakenly pulling fibre out of the ground thinking it’s copper.
Openreach has a partnership with Crimestoppers that offers rewards for information given anonymously to the charity about cable thefts, if it leads to the arrest and conviction of those responsible – you can contact them 100% anonymously on 0800 555 111 or use their anonymous online form. You can also contact Openreach’s security team direct or report via Cambs Police, or if you see a crime in progress, then call the police on 101.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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The scrapyard should not ACCEPTED any copper cable unless need to show OR ID photo card working for Openreach. Without OR ID card photo the scrapyard can rejected copper purchased.
How do you tell it’s Openreach’s copper Phil, and not copper from a multitude of other sources? That’s one of the issues. I know in the past they did have a SmartWater solution to forensically tag their copper, but that can only be applied to newer core copper cables, and you’d still have to hit it lucky with a spot check. To a scrapyard, it’s all just the same metal.
I thought all cable copper belong to Openreach etc
Lots of people who aren’t Openreach use multipair copper cables.
A scrap yard to refuse to buy copper very good hahaha
Surely attacking and disabling critical national infrastructure is terrorism, and should be treated as such?
The punishment should be extraordinary.
I agree, the threat of 15 year prison sentences should deter them and unlimited fines for scrapyards proved to have accepted the stolen copper.
You mean like blocking roads, or throwing paint at gardens and buildings, like Just Stop Oil has been doing? Sure I’m all up for it
Somewhat inclined to agree, deliberate attacks on telecoms’ infrastructure should attract stricter sentences.
All cable thieves should be garrotted with the wire they’ve nicked.
Just do what yo do to all cable ends …. terminate
Awful and disruptive as it may be, copper theft is not “terrorism” – see the definition of the word in any dictionary.
Shame the police are so ineffective. They know exactly when and where the crime was committed, they’ve got tens of thousands of ANPR cameras* on the road network, we can be confident the crims didn’t arrive or depart by donkey. Seems they’re simply not trying hard enough.
* Even with false plates, these still record an image of every passing vehicle.
yes but unless there is intelligence you are expecting them to monitor 33 odd million cars
Not at all. The loss of copper cable will be pretty precisely timestamped, the location is known. The number of vehicles passing through during a say two hour window is going to relatively small, likely less than 2,000). I’m not suggesting it’s ten minutes work, but round our way you can’t go anywhere without being under the view of these cameras, and given that the perpetrators clearly keep doing it, it would repay investing some police time.
And there’s a good chance there is intelligence. You’re not going to do this sort of crime at random because you need to buy your next fix. And you’re not going to turn up in a Citroen Saxo and try and get three quarters of a tonne of copper and insulation on the back seat. These are serial offenders, chances are they have been caught or at least suspected before of related metal thefts (remember when the b*****s were nicking cast iron drain covers, aluminium road signs and the like?).
Cameras are not there to stop crime, so many times the police does not do anything when the crime happens clearly under a CCTV
The only 2 times I’ve seen a police line in my street happened because someone got stabbed to death. At least they still investigate those
“Even with false plates”
But that’s the entire problem, cloned plates make it very difficult to track the vehicle. They aren’t using the same plates for days or weeks on end, and if nobody has witnessed it and can’t describe the vehicle used, how is someone looking at thousands of ANPR images going to know which one was involved, let alone what the false VRM is?
These crimes do get investigated, contrary to the belief on social media, but they’re complex and take time.
Most of it will be packed into shipping containers and moved to Eastern Europe or North Africa. It won’t even see the light of day in Uk scrapyards.
Same with:
– plant machinery
– tools stolen from vans
– high end cars
– parts off high end cars
And what Eastern Europe will do with this copper, eat? Almost each lorry heading through Germany and Poland is being checked for potential dangerous cargo like waste or paperwork mismatch, some of them are also being checked in France when they leave ferry. Except luxury cars that go to African left hand traffic countries, everything else stays within the UK. Tools stolen from vans are offered on car boot sales.
It is a shame that nothing can be put in with the cable and when the cover is opened it sprays out a smelly stinking dye that will stain their skin bright blue, There would need to be some way of disabling the trap for workmen.
Openreach could always replace copper with fibre.