I live in Northern Arizona and we get all of our internet connections from the Phoenix area, 150 miles south. To get that signal here, they use a buried cable that runs through some vast sections of empty desert. Because these areas are uninhabited, they don't go to any great lengths to hide the fact that there is something buried there. Much of the cable is buried under or through dry washes. In the washes, the cable isn't buried as deep as the other areas.
Well, about a year ago, some "tech savvy" individuals decided that they were going to dig it up and steal the copper. Why not, there is no one around to see what they were doing. They dug it up but their plan hit a snag, when they cut the cable. As it turned out, it was all fiber optic cable. No copper to be had. We had no internet connection for 3 or 4 days while the network people repaired the cable.