Article
New threat to Internet infrastructures – beavers
Last week, a portion of Taos County and its outlying areas in northern New Mexico lost Internet and cellphone coverage for nearly 20 hours. The culprit wasn’t a high-tech 24-style terrorist or a hacker from an early 90s movie. It was a beaver.
That’s right. A beaver.
CenturyLink, owners of the fiber-optic cable running from Taos, N.M., to Interstate 25, said more than 1,800 Internet users were affected by the blackout. The number of cellphone users affected is still undetermined, according to an Associated Press report.
David Gonzales, a CenturyLink spokesman, said evidence of the hungry beast’s handiwork (or toothiwork?) was discovered by contractors hired to repair the outage.
While unconfirmed, it is possible the beaver may have been trying to retrofit his outdated dam with some new, high-tech materials.
