Three reasons for NorthwesTel’s three fibre-optic cable cuts this past week.

As we wait for NorthwesTel's (edit: actually, Bell Canada's) weary and underappreciated fibre-optic cable repair team to splice together the line cut near Dawson Creek yesterday, following the cut at Smith River Monday, and the cut at Marsh Lake last Wednesday, it's natural to wonder why these buried lines are so irresistible to backhoe operators.

I think we can trace the problem to the following three poorly-conceived NorthwesTel plans:

1. Sheathing the lines in a camouflage-pattern covering to hide them from the post-9/11 terrorists that jihad all up and down the Alaska Highway.
2. Magnetizing the fibres to better contain the awesome power of the electromagnetic forces coursing through the glass strands at light speed, rendering the cable highly attractive to steel-toothed buckets.
3. Carefully denoting the buried cable at strategic spots with large X marks and guarding each with a flapping skull and crossbones pennant, alerting everyone in the area to the precious communications treasure that lies beneath.

Well, what else could explain it?