[ASkipper]

Originally Posted by Kwiksilver

We had 2 cut 1800 pulp cables on rivers ave. Took us a week of 24 hrs straight crews working. Had to tone every pair. It's easy to rack up a $20,000 bill cutting a big fiber like that.

There is a fiber optic cable that runs down 501 from Florence to Conway owned by AT&T. It controls the 911 service for a lot of the east coast. I have had to dig around it a few times. They always have a tech onsite and will only let us get to within 4 ft of the cable. IF its cut the tech will loose his job and the company that cuts it can be charged very high. We have been told that it cost upwards of $1,000,000 a minute that its out.

Our company sends bills out often. It depends on how big the cable is and how much outage we have but I have seen bills in excess of $100,000. They usually charge $.25 per scotchlock that is used.