A stray bullet knocked thousands of people off the internet
The bullet hit an internet cable and knocked out internet access for parts of Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio
Carol Yepes
An internet outage that impacted parts of Texas last month was caused by a stray bullet that struck a key fiber optic line, according to Spectrum.
The shooter remains a mystery, but nearly 25,000 people were taken offline by the incident. The outage affected parts of Dallas, Irving, Plano, Arlington, Austin, and San Antonio.
While many fiber optic cables are buried in the ground, this particular one was strung along telephone poles. (Different cities and town have different rules about how the Internet reaches homes and businesses.)
As random as a bullet taking down the internet might sound, there's actually precedent to this sort of thing. Three years ago, 30,000 Comcast $CMCSA customers in Oakland, Calif. found themselves unable to go online after people reportedly fired 17 rounds in the air near fiber lines.
That came just before the start of a local NFL rivalry, as the Los Angeles Rams were playing the San Francisco 49ers, but many were unable to watch.
“While this isn’t completely uncommon, it is pretty rare, but we know it when we see it,” a Comcast spokesperson told Dater Center Dynamics at the time.
Meanwhile, in 2011, a bullet knocked out internet, television and telephone service for users in Vineland, NJ. That shot hit a Fios box, shattering a circuit board. It's unclear if that was a deliberate act of vandalism or an accident.
Internet outages aren't uncommon but are more often caused by cuts in fiber lines from more traditional means and faulty software updates than firearms.