FILE: The view toward downtown Oakland from Piedmont, Calif.
Copper theft, a persistent problem across the Bay Area that hasdisrupted 911 serviceandclosed a DMV office, is now knocking out internet service in Oakland, officials say.
Since the start of the year, thieves have been targeting copper cables used for telecommunications in the Oakland Hills, specifically on a roughly 8-mile stretch of Skyline Boulevard from Evergreen Avenue to the northeastern edge of Knowland Park, according to the Oakland Police Department. OPD did not detail exactly how many instances of copper theft occurred in recent months but said there have been multiple reports going back to late January.
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AT&T spokesperson Chris Collins confirmed to SFGATE that an outage on Tuesday was caused by copper wire theft. The company also reported back-to-back outages, on April 15 and 16, he added.
In all three instances, thieves cut through multiple sections of fiber and copper cable at the corner of Skyline Boulevard and Keller Avenue, triggering an outage that lasted roughly five hours, he said. AT&T said it is offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for the copper theft.
A recentblog post fromAT&T global security lead investigator Rahdeese Alcutt said organized copper theft is happening “more frequently and on a much larger scale.” In 2025, AT&T reported more than 10,400 copper theft incidents throughout the country, with an average of 200 per week, Alcutt wrote.
Lois Gaudet, a resident in the Oakland Hills, told SFGATE the AT&T outages are also a recurring issue in her neighborhood.
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“The more wireless you are, the worse it was! Almost as bad as losing power,” Gaudet said in a Nextdoor message. “I have solar with a battery to avoid that, now I must reactivate my [internet] system to keep internet and wifi.”
Source: Drudge Report
