On March 28th, a 75-year-old woman in Georgia was trying to steal copper wires, while she accidentally cut off some fiber optic, which were responsible in carrying most of Armenia‘s internet data. Consequently, most of Armenia and Georgia was without internet for about 12 hours.
Aishtan Shakarian the woman responsible for the crime lives in a small village near Georgian capital Tbilisi. Police arrested her, but she would probably not get a big punishment. Such crime usually has at least one year prison term, but police said due to her age, she may get off easy.
An alarm went off when the fiber optic lines were cut giving out the location of the problem. When the police arrived the woman was still digging with her shovel. She admitted digging for copper wires to the police, which she was going to try and sell and make some money.
Apparently the internet lines are laid next to the rail road tracks that goes from Georgia to Armenia. They are underground and are pretty secure,but sometime land shifts may expose part of the wires, which is probably how the women came upon the wires.
Some internet companies in Armenia switched to alternate lines coming from Iran, but most were out for a period of 12 hours.
An Armenian telemarketing company representative said that this was not the first time such thing had happened. Last year something similar happened, but was not reported to the press.