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Papua No. 1 News Portal | Jubi

Jakarta, Jubi – Internet service for 900 customers in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, Canada, died due to a beaver biting the fiber optic internet cable on Saturday (4/24/2021) last weekend.

A colony of beavers was recorded gnawing on fiber optic cables near the dam over the weekend. Media reported on Wednesday (28/4/2021) that Tumbler Ridge District officials said the area experienced a sudden and unexpected outage around 4 a.m. Saturday.

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Tumbler Ridge is a town of about 2,000 people northeast of Prince George, British Columbia, and home to a UNESCO Global Geopark.

A spokeswoman for internet service provider Telus, Liz Sauvé, said the internet outage in Tumbler Ridge was very strange and unique.

“Crews discovered that beavers were chewing through cables in several locations, causing an internet outage around 4 a.m. Saturday,” Sauvé said.

He said his team found a dam nearby and it appeared the beavers were digging underground along the river to reach our cable, which was buried about three feet or 1 meter underground and protected by 4.5-inch-thick cable.

“The beavers first chew the pipe casing before chewing the optical cable in certain places,” explains Liz Sauvé.

Sauvé said photos taken in the field show beavers using Telus materials to build their homes. The image shows tape marking fibre optic cables, which are usually buried underground, already above their dams.

The outage also interrupted television service for about 60 customers and cellphone coverage was spotty in the area, Telus said.

It took about 36 hours to fix the problem, with crews having to dig through frozen ground to reach the damaged fiber optic cable, before internet service finally returned to normal at 3:30 p.m. local time on Sunday.