Oceanic Time Warner Cable officials say they believe that would-be copper thieves cut a fiber-optic cable Tuesday night in a remote area of Kalihi Valley, temporarily knocking out telecasts of the Sugar Bowl on parts of O'ahu and all of the Neighbor Islands.

Oceanic officials have asked Honolulu police to investigate.

"There was nothing we could have done," Oceanic spokesman Alan Pollock said yesterday as crews replaced the damaged line. "We're a victim of this."

The cable was in a rain forest below the Wilson Tunnels, near the scene of another Oceanic line that was vandalized three years ago. The line that was cut Tuesday night usually runs overhead but had been knocked down by a tree, Pollock said.

Oceanic technicians believe someone then cut through 70 of the cable's 144 fibers around 5:15 p.m. Tuesday night and bent the cable's insulation open to a 90-degree angle as if to peer inside, Pollock said.

"We're not certain it was a copper thief, but our technicians all believe it was — because there's no reason to inspect a cable like that," he said. "However, it is important to point out that there is no copper in Oceanic's fiber cables. For all you copper thieves out there, there is no copper in Oceanic's cables.

"Any time there's damage to company property we file a police report and the police took photos," Pollock said. "We would love to find who did it. It's silly for us not to."

The damaged fibers serve 90,000 homes on O'ahu. Backup systems began kicking in automatically and kept service from being interrupted to 85,000 O'ahu customers, Pollock said.

But 5,000 homes in Punalu'u, Kane'ohe, Kailua and Hawai'i Kai temporarily lost service, he said.

"Hawai'i Kai had it worst. In the worst-case situation, we had people out for an hour," Pollock said. "We're very sorry for our customers."

The damaged lines also feed underwater cables that lead to the Neighbor Islands and all 80,000 customers on the Big Island, on Kaua'i and in Maui County suffered some form of disruption, he said.

Unlike on O'ahu, the backup systems for each of the Neighbor Islands rely on broadcast signals that have to be manually turned on, further delaying the resumption of the game.

"Our Neighbor Island customers may have gotten a little bit of a cloudy picture and that's because of the way they received the signal," he said, adding that Neighbor Island customers' service was restored within five to 20 minutes.

Some Neighbor Island customers said their televisions were out for much longer than 20 minutes.

"Gotta be way more than 20 minutes," said Pancho Alcon, who hosted a Sugar Bowl party of about 40 frustrated friends at his home in Kamiloloa Heights on Moloka'i.

When the television signal suddenly cut out with UH trailing Georgia 7-3, Alcon said, "We called all over the island and the guys with antennas could still catch a signal."

While some partygoers hit the food table, Alcon said, "some other guys ran up the road to the people with antennas and came back with updates" on the game.

When service was finally restored, Alcon said, the sound was full of static.

Pollock said the company expected all service, including the sound, to be restored by yesterday afternoon.

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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