He is talking about the combination of both.
The fiber cut took out control communications of the substation, along with the actual physical destruction.
When they equipment started to fail from the destruction the power company couldn’t automatically take it off line because the power company no longer had control over it from the control center.
The people had to have information as to what manholes the substation communications link was routed through.
And they had to know the identifying marks the fiber cables had that differentiated them from other utility and power cables that could have killed them if they tried to cut them.
LOL
NO. Its pretty easy to distinguish power from fibre and the are run in their own runs.
That is; fiber or communications cable(low voltage) and high power electric have their own paths when they are pulled to protect comms from EMF interference and and and to avoid co-mingling.
Very non NECA and wouldn’t happen in USA or Canada.
As for the information it’s fairly public.
And the cuts?
Been going on for long as I’ve been in telecom, 30 years, on that same path.
Many times it turns out to be an employee of one utility or another