An article relating to this blog post on Finextra:
C&W cracks Egg Web site
UK Internet bank Egg is currently offline after service provider Cable and Wireless (C&W) admitted to "experiencing some issues on our network".
See article
News this week from Las Vegas about
telcos offering rewards for information on thieves stealing live cable got me thinking about the possible cause of Internet bank
Egg's woes this week.
C&W, which provides Egg's web hosting, says it was having to put in re-routes to take customers away from the fault while they isolate it. If they find that the fault is a section of cable that's mysteriously gone missing, it wouldn't be the first time it's
happened in the UK (though you're unlikely to hear many public announcements about this.) I've heard of at least one major UK bank that had an ATM network outage a few years ago and after much troubleshooting it traced the fault to cable theft.
And even though it's the copper the thieves want (worth up to $4 a pound in scrap value at the moment apparently), fibre optic cable isn't immune from the trend either, because the thieves can't always tell the difference from the outside. Quite often they
also can't tell the difference between neutral, ground and live - with
Darwin Awards-style
consequences.