Copper thieves cutting Auckland fibre, leaving about 10,000 people offline in one outage
New Zealand police say attempts to steal disused copper cable are damaging live fibre lines in Auckland. One recent outage in Swanson and Massey affected an estimated 10,000 people.
Police in Auckland say thieves hunting for scrap copper are cutting into live fibre-optic cables, and that incidents involving telecommunications infrastructure are rising, RNZ reported on 6 November 2026. An estimated 10,000 people in the Swanson and Massey areas lost service in a recent outage caused by a damaged fibre cable.
Detective Sergeant Luke Blignaut said offenders are going after disused landline and internet copper cables that fibre has largely replaced. Because the fibre often runs alongside the old copper, he said, the thieves are mistaking it for copper and cutting it too. Blignaut told RNZ the problem "is becoming a pretty large issue that goes a lot further than just the theft of copper".
A similar incident cut internet at a Swanson school during an emergency involving a student. Staff had to retrieve the student's medical records manually from local servers, which delayed their response by 20 minutes.
Police are also targeting the market for the stolen metal and want scrap dealers to work with them. Blignaut said that "If scrap dealers are accepting this stolen copper, that is enabling these offenders to continue". He said telecommunications copper is easily identifiable, adding that "These are very large copper cables, and no average person who walks off the street should have access to it". Dealers who suspect anything should contact police immediately, he said, and knowingly buying stolen telecommunications equipment is itself a criminal offence.
The reports do not give a cost estimate for the Auckland incidents or say which network operators were affected.