About 20,000 Comcast customers in Berkeley area lost internet after vandals cut cables Sunday

About 20,000 Comcast customers in Berkeley and beyond lost internet, TV and other services Sunday night after vandals in Richmond cut through multiple lines of fiber optic cables.

“Unfortunately, yesterday’s vandalism incident is one of several occurrences that has happened this year,” Comcast spokesperson Jon Koriel wrote in an email Monday. A similar incident cut service for over a day in Berkeley in September 2023.

Comcast provides Xfinity internet service to many in Berkeley. Koriel said he couldn’t say exactly where in Richmond the vandalism occurred for safety reasons.

“Comcast technicians were on site for most of the day and began working immediately to restore services to our customers — and all services have now been restored,” Koriel said Monday. “We are also continuing to collaborate with local authorities to determine the cause of these repeated incidents and to prevent further acts of vandalism from occurring.”

Richmond police said they received a report Sunday afternoon of stolen copper cable on the 2500 block of Bissell Avenue and have reached out to Comcast to see if it was related to the outage. A man believed to be trying to steal copper wiring was found dead in a Richmond manhole in August.

One Berkeley resident told Berkeleyside Sunday that they feel the recurring Comcast service outage issue is a reason to stop AT&T from abandoning its landline telephone network in the hills. Another said he was “sitting here in the comfort and warm bosom of my smartphone and a few good books.”

This article has been updated after publication with additional information.

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Before joining Berkeleyside as managing editor in April 2021, Zac was editor of the Southwest Journal, a 30,000-circulation biweekly community paper in Minneapolis, MN. While there, he led coverage of... More by Zac Farber