Cable Firm Cites Sabotage in De La Hoya TV Outage

Buenavista Cable Co. is blaming sabotage for the technical knockout that left 14,000 Eastside customers staring at a blank screen Saturday, including thousands who paid $52 to watch the highly anticipated boxing match between Oscar De La Hoya and Sugar Shane Mosley.

On Monday, Moctesuma Esparza, the owner of Buenavista Cable Co., announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for cutting vital fiber optic cable lines hours before Saturday’s bout was to be broadcast to subscribers in East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights.

“We are mortified and terribly embarrassed that our customers were denied being able to get the fight,” Esparza said at a news conference at the company’s offices. “It was a great fight, an important fight. And certainly to the customers here in East Los Angeles, they cared a great deal about it.”

De La Hoya grew up in East Los Angeles.

Police authorities were investigating the case but had no comment early Monday.

The service disruption occurred about 5 p.m., when someone cut about 120 fiber optic cable lines in the underground vault that houses connections to the company’s cable system. The vault is along Eastern Avenue near the San Bernardino Freeway,

Shortly before the cutoff, the company’s office received a telephone threat from a man who, General Manager Ben Ochoa said, warned that “something bad was going to happen.”

“They just said that they would do something to the company, but they didn’t say where or when,” said Ochoa, who was at a loss to explain a motivation for the act. “There’s always somebody dissatisfied, but we don’t know what prompted this individual to say what he said.”

Company officials said they have no idea who could have committed the act, which is a crime under Federal Communications Commission and state laws.

Esparza said Monday that the perpetrators needed “specific technical knowledge,” but he did not believe it could be the work of a disgruntled former or current employee.

Just last Christmas, the company gave $100,000 in bonuses to its 50 employees, many of whom have worked at the locally owned company for at least five years, Esparza said. It is not a union shop, he said.

“We take care of our employees,” he said. “There’s always some labor issues, but overall, we have excellent relationships with our employees.”

Founded in 1980, the company had recently finished rebuilding its cable system with state-of-the-art fiber optics, and the damage forced technical crews to spend nearly 12 hours reconnecting the lines. Each line is thinner than a strand of hair.

The company gave a $15 credit to all its customers for the inconvenience and refunded all subscribers who paid for the fight. It is also offering them a free movie channel for a month.

The company suffered about $100,000 in damages, said Esparza.