Subscribers in Southern California of Spectrum’s Internet service experienced outages over the weekend following what company officials said was an attempted theft of copper lines located in Van ...

Spectrum believes cable-cutters were looking for copper and — though they found none — they severed fiber-optic cables, causing a widespread internet outage.

More than 25,000 Spectrum users in the Los Angeles area reported issues on DownDetector.com, which tracks outages. Users self-report to DownDetector, so it may not represent the full scale of outages.

Spectrum officials have reportedly ratcheted up their rhetoric following the apparently deliberate slashing of fiber-optic lines in the San Fernando Valley. Initially, the company called the ...