By Monica Alleven
Friday, April 17, 2009
Verizon Wireless doesn’t know who cut the fiber that led to last week’s outage in Silicon Valley, but it’s suing them anyway.
A complaint filed Wednesday in California Superior Court in Santa Clara County names “John Doe and Does 2-100” as defendants. Verizon says it will amend its complaint when the true names of the wrongdoers are identified.
Verizon Wireless and Verizon California filed the suit after someone destroyed cables that provide services for their respective networks. Verizon uses fiber optic cables owned by other carriers; in this case, it was AT&T’s.
More than 100,000 Verizon Wireless customers were without service for more than 20 hours last week. Customers could not make or receive calls or transmit data, and customers for much of the time could not make 911 calls.
A Verizon Wireless spokesman said the company will continue to support law enforcement in any way possible to help identify, catch and prosecute the people responsible for cutting AT&T's cables.
The suit seeks general damages in an amount to be determined, as well as punitive damages and attorney’s fees.