An act of vandalism caused a widespread outage for Spectrum Mobile customers in Los Angeles on Sunday (June 15).

The outage was caused by a cut to a fiber cable.

According to Downdetector, reports of network issues peaked at around 1:00 pm ET, with around 5,000 reporting the outage.

A few hours earlier, another spike revealed close to 2,500 reports of issues on Spectrum's network.

Customers were impacted by the outages well into the afternoon, though the number of reports has dropped significantly.

Spectrum said that fiber optic lines were cut in multiple places in Van Nuys, Los Angeles. Vandals may have attempted to steal copper instead to sell for cash, as is a common issue for network operators around the globe.

However, Spectrum issued a statement noting that its fiber network doesn't contain copper.

"Criminal acts of network vandalism have become an issue affecting the entire telecommunications industry, not just Spectrum, largely due to the increase in the price of precious metals," said Spectrum in a statement.

"These acts of vandalism are not only a crime, but also affect our customers, local businesses, and potentially emergency services. Spectrum's fiber lines do not include any copper."

The company, which is working with the Los Angeles Police Department, said it's offering a reward of up to $25,000 for information that leads to an arrest.