Verizon has followed in the footsteps of AT&T and offered a cash reward in its battle to curb the rising vandalism against network infrastructure in California.

A few days after Sunday's outage that caused Internet disruption for 12,000 Verizon customers in parts of Southern California, Verizon has offered a reward of $25,000 to anyone who can provide information that leads to the arrest of those responsible for the multiple fiber cuts.

The telco noted that the vandals cut multiple fiber cables, while emphasizing the impact of such outages on the communities they affect.

The outage lasted for a number of hours before engineers restored services by 7:30 pm local time.

“These are criminal acts, affecting people’s safety and are putting lives at risk,” said Vandana Venkatesh, chief legal officer, Verizon. “We are actively investigating several recent incidents and are pursuing all avenues to assist law enforcement in finding and convicting the perpetrators of these acts.”

The issue of vandalism against telecoms infrastructure is one the mobile carriers have been battling for years, with the trend particularly prevalent in California.

Citing data, Verizon notes that such vandalism has cost the state of California $252.6 million, racking up 6,297 attacks last year, with Los Angeles hit with 1,131 such attacks.

The issue is a nationwide one, however, with other states such as Texas also suffering from these acts of vandalism.

Rival carrier AT&T has regularly sounded the alarm over these attacks, previously stating that it will offer rewards of up to $20,000 for tips that lead to the arrest and conviction of individuals involved in copper cable theft or its attempted sale in California.

“Across the country, people rely on us for critical connectivity 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Joe Russo, EVP & president of global networks and technology.

“Our network and security teams are working with law enforcement at all levels in tracking down the perpetrators and bringing these egregious acts to an end. This must stop because our communities should not be put at risk by thieves who vandalize or steal cables.”

Anyone who has any information on such attacks or witnesses acts of vandalism against network infrastructure is urged to call 911 and then contact Verizon’s security department at 1-800-997-3287.

DCD covered the issue of theft of telecoms infrastructure in a previous edition of DCD>Magazine. Read about it here.