Ketchikan suffered an internet blackout in the early morning hours of May 4. Not because of anything that happened in Ketchikan — it was the result of vandalism 90 miles to the south in Prince Rupert, British Columbia.

Acting Ketchikan Public Utilities Telecom Division Manager Dan White said he got the call of an internet outage at about 2:30 a.m. Monday morning, May 4. He ran into the office “and quickly realized it was a CityWest problem (Ketchikan’s downstream provider), and we reached out to them, and they were getting overwhelmed with calls.”

According to information from the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., thousands of people in northwest British Columbia and Haida Gwaii also lost internet service during the interruption.

KPU staff later realized that the problem was not with CityWest, but with their larger downstream provider Telus, White said.

“As crews got onsite and more people looked at it — actually, CityWest had people onsite to see it for themselves and take photos — it was obvious that it was someone who was cutting into the (Telus) fiber cable, thinking it was a copper cable,” White said.

High copper prices have made the metal attractive to thieves who can resell what they can steal.

White was told the cable had been cut more than once, making the problem even worse.

He said the fiber optic cables are strung on power poles, unlike undersea cables. The area where the cables were vandalized is “a pretty rural area, I’m told.”

As the day wore on, waiting for repairs to the vandalized line, Ketchikan’s downtown businesses were severely affected by the outage with cruise ship shoppers in town, losing the ability to process credit cards. Gas stations, service businesses and grocery stores were experiencing similar troubles.

Telus was able to repair the cable and restore service by late afternoon that same day.

The stretch northward in British Columbia to Prince Rupert is a single line, making it more susceptible to internet loss in the case of damage with no backup.

Internet signals move between Prince Rupert and Ketchikan through an undersea cable.

White said Ketchikan customers should not have to wait much longer for a new fiber cable to be completed that will connect their gateway in Prince Rupert directly to Vancouver, British Columbia, when the current line on power poles will serve as the “backup path.”

“They’ve been working on it for a few years now, but they’ve had some struggles making it happen technically, but it goes straight from Prince Rupert to Vancouver and it’s pretty close to completion, but at the final miles they’re having a few issues,” White said.