DENVER – Internet providers suffered disruptions Tuesday in what a West Coast internet provider said appeared to be a coordinated physical attack on three high-capacity "backbone" lines in California.

Wave Broadband said three major fiber-optic cables in the Sacramento area were "physically severed in what appears to be a coordinated attack on multiple internet carriers."

Wave spokesman Mark Peterson said the company's subscribers in the suburban Sacramento area were suffering outages, and crews were working to restore the connections, which were severed at 4:20 a.m. local time. Peterson said Wave itself is a customer of the two backbone companies apparently targeted, Level 3 and Zayo. Both backbone companies are based in Colorado.

In a statement, a Level 3 spokeswoman confirmed a "service disruption" and said the company assessing the damage and impact, while a crew on the ground was preparing to repair the line.

Representatives of Zayo did not immediately return requests for comment.

Fiber-optic backbone cables are the interstate highways of the information superhighway, carrying vast amounts of data between decentralized hubs. From there, Internet services are delivered to homes and businesses by smaller cables, including DSL.

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