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UK network operators ask govt to fend off attacks on fiber (www.theregister.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Jones told The Register that attacks range from simply chopping through fiber-optic cables in an underground duct, to lifting the cover of an access chamber, pouring in petrol, and setting the whole lot alight.

The motives for these attacks are thought to be simply vandalism or people with a grudge against a particular provider, rather than being a case of network operators aiming to sabotage their rivals, Jones claimed.

“You find instances where a chamber containing equipment for multiple providers has been accessed, but only one provider has been attacked,” he said, adding that it could be ex-employees with a grudge and that some attacks have even been 5G protesters simply targeting any digital infrastructure.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (8 children)

fiber

Huh. It's The Register, which is a British piece of media, with a London-based author writing about an event in the UK and they're using the traditionally-American English spelling. Maybe the UK is going towards "fiber" rather than "fibre".

hits Google N-grams

Ah hah. Yup, apparently it's at about 50-50, but the majority in British English just switched to "fiber" within the last ten years.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fiber%2Cfibre&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-GB-2019&smoothing=3

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (4 children)

There’s a few things going on here, in addition to a general Americanisation.

Firstly El Reg obviously wants to attract those sweet sweet American clicks, so they could well have American English as their style guide (I’m a bit doubtful, I bet they use colour).

Secondly there’s long been a tendency to use American spelling in IT journalism for technical objects. So “optical fiber” but “dietary fibre”; “floppy disk”, but djs “spin discs”. “TV programme”, but “computer program”.

It’s been that ways since at least the 80s, quite possibly earlier.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Disk vs disc I believe is down to the type of medium, magnetic disk vs optical disc

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