'Suspected Vandalism' Shut Down Optimum Internet In Fairfield County

FAIRFIELD COUNTY, CT — A suspected vandal is believed to have deliberately cut Optimum fiber internet cables on Friday, an act which caused a disruption in service to thousands of Fairfield County customers for several hours, according to company officials.

Details about where the cables were cut were not disclosed, but News 12 Connecticut, which is owned by Optimum parent company Altice USA, reported that police have been notified of the incident.

"Due to a fiber cut caused by suspected vandalism, some Optimum customers in Fairfield County, CT are experiencing a service interruption," the company posted on Facebook. "Our Optimum teams are onsite repairing the extensive damage, which may cause service interruptions into Saturday. We appreciate your patience. For updates, visit optimum.net."

In an email to Patch on Friday afternoon, company spokesperson Janet Meahan said that was around 16,000 customers were affected by the outage.

"In addition, our crews are making progress and several thousand customers have had their service restored recently," Meahan said. "Restoration efforts will continue until all customers are back online."

By about 8 p.m., better than 99 percent of affected customers had their service restored, according to Meahan.

"We thank our crews for their hard work repairing the damage and our customers for their patience as we worked to restore service," she said.

Norwalk police told Patch that they received a call from an Optimum employee reporting damage to some fiber optic lines, "and that he felt it was intentional. The Detective Bureau is investigating, and as of yet remains ongoing."

Click here to view the Optimum outage map.

Patch editor RJ Scofield contributed to this story.