

Attention metal thieves: Buy BT, get 75 million miles of copper - fvbock
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/22/bt_copper_cable_theft/

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cperciva
Tanenbaum pointed this out a couple decades ago with respect to AT&T:

 _At one time, 80 percent of AT &T’s capital value was the copper in the local
loops. AT&T was then, in effect, the world’s largest copper mine. Fortunately,
this fact was not widely known in the investment community. Had it been known,
some corporate raider might have bought AT&T, terminated all telephone service
in the United States, ripped out all the wire, and sold the wire to a copper
refiner to get a quick payback._

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Someone
I guess that approach would have seen the price of copper sink rapidly and
very deeply, as it would remove quite a bit of demand and would introduce a
new supplier.

~~~
jonknee
There would be plenty of demand--someone would be building a new phone network
to service all those old AT&T customers.

~~~
rbranson
Ron Paul approves this message.

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tomelgin
Before you consider buying a company and selling off its assets, you have to
realize that when you own a company you also own its debt, and that if you
liquidate you have to pay off all that debt (unless you can pocket the cash
and file for bankruptcy, not generally legal).

This info is publicly available and quite a bit more accurate that the
Register's napkin math.

As of March 31, 2011 (end of BT's last fiscal year), they owned $23bln (that's
USD) in "Property Plant & Equipment" (including all the copper in question)
and held $35bln in liabilities.

[1][http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=BT+Balance+Sheet&annual](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=BT+Balance+Sheet&annual)

Also note: the price of copper was higher in March 2011 than it is now.
[http://www.kitcometals.com/charts/copper_historical_large.ht...](http://www.kitcometals.com/charts/copper_historical_large.html)

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simonw
I used to think that designing railway signals must be the hardest problem in
engineering, because every time I'm delayed on a train (a pretty common
occurrence in the UK) the announcement blames it on a "signal failure".

Then I found out that the problem is caused by an epidemic of metal theft on
the railways!

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pbhjpbhj
It's becoming a big problem in the UK - my parents phone and broadband was
down for about a week when their (rural) wires were stripped. The thieves get
a truck, tie on the cable and drive, rips the whole thing out the [shallow
ditch in the] ground, wrap it up and sell it ... then they come back a week
later, when the cable has been replaced, and do it again.

Someone tried to steal the gas pipes from a business premises in my city, left
gas leaking in to the building for 24 hours or so, didn't even manage to make
off with the pipe. Morons.

~~~
chris11
I worked for awhile at a local power coop. My boss had to go into court one
day because someone was caught trying to steal copper from a substation. The
guy was lucky he didn't kill himself.

~~~
seabee
People do die for it[0] [1]. Not to sound too flippant but the lengths they go
to just to steal some wire is genuinely shocking. Do they not appreciate the
dangers?

[0]
[http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1090905_m...](http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1090905_metal_thief_found_dead_under_pylon)
[1]
[http://www.whtimes.co.uk/news/substation_electrocution_trage...](http://www.whtimes.co.uk/news/substation_electrocution_tragedy_two_men_admit_burglary_1_459762)

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rmc
It wouldn't work in practice. BT is legally required to provide phone service,
so you couldn't just buy the company and stop providing phone service on
economic grounds.

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smoyer
Telecom companies (including cable operators) are all about cash-flow. When
you have a solid subscriber base, there's not an issue with carrying a lot of
debt. What is a problem is that the younger generations aren't tied to having
a land-line and the older generations are gradually following suit.

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asymmetric
I gotta say I love El Reg's sarcastic style

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shithead
If I knew what an "attention metal" thief was, or just "attention metal", I'd
agree.

Effective sarcasm demands flawless execution, and they're losing that.
Nowadays one can often find misspellings and sundry grammatical errors in
their texts.

~~~
rdw
I read The Reg ten years ago; spelling errors and screwups of all kinds were
completely standard.

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wslh
In Argentina we had it first! [http://ferfal.blogspot.com/2010/10/cable-
stolen-for-its-copp...](http://ferfal.blogspot.com/2010/10/cable-stolen-for-
its-copper.html)

In 2008 someone stole a bronze from our building!

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dazzla
How about pulling fiber through instead of a string assuming the copper is
worth more than the fiber? Clear some debt as well as covering the cost of the
fiber and upgrade the network at the same time.

