“cut” is used for both. Common causes are digging/construction work, maintenance by other carriers sharing the same right-of-way, weather (mostly for aboveground runs and equipment), and occasionally stuff like animals (“squirrel chew”), hunters shooting at things, and equipment failure that doesn’t fail over to redundant gear properly.
Intentional, targeted damage is really rare, even when multiple paths experience concurrent outages. The fact that 2 paths were affected isn’t enough to assume it was intentional.
Intentional, targeted damage is really rare, even when multiple paths experience concurrent outages. The fact that 2 paths were affected isn’t enough to assume it was intentional.