[ISN] Network Card Theft Causes Internet Outage

[William Knowles]

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1583347,00.asp

By Sean Gallagher 
May 3, 2004 

UPDATED: The theft of network cards from a Verizon central office in 
New York has caused some customers there to lose their Internet 
access. 

A handful of corporate customers were left without e-mail and Internet 
access Monday after the theft of networking equipment from a New York 
City office late Sunday. 

Law enforcement officials said four DS-3 cards were reported missing 
from a Manhattan co-location facility owned by Verizon Communications 
Inc. The theft at 240 E. 38th St. occurred just after 10:30 p.m. on 
Sunday and is being investigated by New York City Police and members 
of the joint terrorism task force, according to NYPD spokesman Lt. 
Brian Burke. 

The outage affected area customers of Sprint Corp., including Ziff 
Davis Media Inc., the publisher of eWEEK.com. 

"We found backup cards in the area," said Charles Fleckenstein, 
spokesman for Sprint in Overland Park, Kan. "All of the cards are now 
on site in New York. [They] are being installed at this moment." 
Service was being restored to customers as the cards were being 
installed, he said. 

Sprint officials said other ISPs were affected by the incident, but 
declined to identify them. Verizon spokesman Dan Diaz would not 
identify which providers were affected by the theft of the equipment. 
Diaz said no Verizon Internet customers were affected by the outage. 

Fleckenstein said that the outage was "not major," and not large 
enough to require a report to the Federal Communications Commission. 

In addition, no notice of the outage was posted to Sprint's Scheduled 
Maintenance and Outage page. Under FCC rules, phone carriers must 
report outages affecting more than 50,000 subscribers within two 
hours. 

Editor's Note: This story was updated with later information from 
Sprint. 
 

 
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