Update: Bay Area vandalism disrupts service to Sacramento, Rocklin Wave Broadband customers

Phone and non-local television signals for Wave Broadband customers in the Sacramento, Woodland and Rocklin areas were disrupted Tuesday after three major fiber cables connecting the region were cut.

The provider of residential and business cable television, internet and telephone services described the outage as “a coordinated attack on multiple internet carriers beginning at 4:20 a.m. Tuesday” in an online message to customers.

Mark Peterson, a spokesman for Wave Broadband, said late Tuesday afternoon that the fiber cables affected are not owned by Wave Broadband, but by two internet backbone providers, Level 3 and Zayo. Those firms are handling the repairs. The only Wave Broadband customers affected by the outage, he said, were in the suburban Sacramento area, including West Sacramento and Rocklin.

Peterson said the primary effect was to telephone service, but he said Wave Broadband used its own technology to restore 911 service to all telephone customers. He said internet was operating, but slower than usual. Television service, with the exception of some cable packages, also was available.

In a news release issued late Tuesday afternoon, officials with the FBI’s Sacramento field office said that although customers in a variety of Northern California service areas were affected by the outage, the vandalism that resulted in the outages was confined to “a single geographic location in the San Francisco Bay Area.”

Woodland Mayor Tom Stallard said that his town was affected by the outage. He said Wave service at his business was still out on Wednesday.

“I own a small company and I had to send my nine workers home at noon on Tuesday,” Stallard said. “We couldn’t do anything.”

He said the City of Woodland lost web communications with citizens on Tuesday. The Chamber of Commerce also closed on Tuesday, he said.

“The business loss must be substantial,” Stallard said. “People can’t call us and can’t e-mail us. Our phones run through our internet.”

Peterson said he did not have an estimate of when services would be fully restored.

Wave Broadband serves more than 415,000 residential and business customers in Washington, Oregon, Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area. The company is headquartered in Kirkland, Wash.

This story was originally published June 30, 2015 at 11:34 AM with the headline "Update: Bay Area vandalism disrupts service to Sacramento, Rocklin Wave Broadband customers."