NOTE: Such thefts normally occur late at night and often – but not always – in rural or suburban areas (slower police response) and around manhole covers, cables, poles and any other parts of the broadband network. A spokesperson for Openreach told ISPreview: “We’re extremely disappointed that residents and businesses in St Neots have once again been affected by criminals stealing copper and fibre cables from our network. AdvertisementAs we’ve said before, the ongoing deployment of Full Fibre (FTTP) broadband lines should, eventually, resolve the core problem as optical fibre has no value to thieves. But this won’t happen for a while because fibre and copper cables often share some of the same ducts (i.e. Completely removing core copper cables will take a fair few years.