Cable thefts force telecoms firms to look to optical fibre

Cable theft, once the province of petty thieves, is now more often an organised crime that is paying big dividends to criminal gangs as the price of copper continues to rise. Whether power cables or telecoms cables, the wiring that drives the modern world is filled with copper, a finite resource that is beginning to make its scarcity felt.

As the developing world races to catch up with industrialised nations, laying the infrastructure it needs to power its people and its communications, the price of copper has been driven to up to a cost that makes the organised theft of cables a profitable business.

Many people think that cable theft is a 'victimless' crime, but cables stolen from railway lines or other transport infrastructures have caused accidents and the loss of power, particularly to rural areas, can be dangerous and distressing. In addition, the cost to businesses and governments to repair cable systems and deal with outages can be prohibitive.

190 cases of cable theft in last two years in UAE

In October, Dubai Police said they were working to stop a "trend" of cable thefts. They said that 190 cases had been investigated in the last two years.

The price criminals can get for a tonne of copper is in the region of AED35,000, but this then is also the price that companies must pay to replace stolen cables, as well as the labour to do the work.

Worldwide, the problem has reached the point where companies are looking for solutions. For power providers, mineral-insulated copper-clad cables or copper-clad aluminium wiring can provide an answer. For telecoms firms however, the epidemic of copper theft could provide the impetus to lay down fibre-optic cabling. "For telecommunications, optical fibre is the natural replacement for copper," says Hatem Bamatraf, senior vice president of network development and operations at du.

Replacing copper infrastructure is costly

The problem is that replacing existing copper infrastructures with fibre optics can be a costly affair. Even just laying a fibre optic network is often expensive. For example, South American countries including Brazil, Argentina, Chile and others are currently discussing a plan to link their countries' fibre optic networks. To do this they would need just 2,000km of cabling, but the cost is estimated at $100 million.

However, laying it down fresh is still a lot cheaper than replacing legacy system. "The trend currently in telecom industry is to use fibre for any new infrastructure development," Bamatraf says.

The carrying capability of fibre optics is another strong reason to lay that kind of wiring down.

"This is why the core of all modern networks is almost entirely run over fibre. With the advent of Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology, optical fibres are also making significant penetration into the access edge of the network," Bamatraf adds.

Telecoms firms are also getting the push for investment from their customers, because fibre optics makes their networks faster. "Some of the operators [are] replacing the old copper with fibre. This is of course to cater for the bandwidth demand from customers and to meet the explosion in content and the digital lifestyle of people," he states.

Moving straight to wireless is an option

The other option for developing countries that don't have an existing copper telecoms system is to move straight to wireless, an option that's popular in Africa.

"In some African countries, such as Kenya, telecom operators have decided to invest more heavily in wireless networks due to the persistent problem of cable theft," the International Cablemakers Federation (ICF) says on its website.

"However, even these 'wireless' systems are not immune and can be disrupted by cable theft, as cables used within wireless base stations may be targeted by thieves," the federation added.

But for those companies and governments that have to invest slowly in fibre optics and wireless systems, the problem of cable theft still needs to be combated now.

In many countries, a major step has been to alert the public to the prevalence of cable theft, as the Dubai Police did in October. The only other option is to secure the cables as much as possible. "There are incidents [of cable theft] that happened across the region, given that copper is considered to be a valuable mineral," Bamatraf said. "However, having the right security measures in an operator's network has reduced the number of such incidents."