Apparently at around 9:30pm on Wednesday 10th September the London Mayfair exchange experienced a break-in where routers, networking cards and fibre was stolen. The Register has a little more on the incident along with a statement confirming the break-in.
We can confirm there was a break-in at our Mayfair Telephone Exchange last night (Wednesday), this is a now an ongoing police investigation and therefore we are unable to comment further.
BT apologises for any disruption caused to our customers. Our engineers are working around the clock to ensure that full service is up and running as soon as possible.BT statement on robbery
The robbery leaves potentially thousands of people without broadband, and how fast BT will be able to get services back up and running depends on what was stolen, and repairing potential damage to hardware. Oddly no major service outage message appears to have been issued which one would have expected.
Even the size of the object is no barrier to things being stolen these days, in Pennsylvania a 120 foot wireless tower was stolen recently. Stealing of copper cables are not uncommon, with the scrap value of copper making it an attractive target, though it seems cables running alongside train tracks are more commonly stolen than BT phone wiring.
Update Friday 3pm 12th September We have been informed by BT that all wholesale services on the exchange have now been restored.
Surely the routers would not be useful to anyone but large telcos/ISPs like BT themselves, and corporations are hardly likely to buy them?
Perhaps the thieves plan to export them to developing nation(s) which are less likely to enquire as to the sources of the 'goods'