Rats partly to blame for crash of New Zealand communications system

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - Rats gnawing through fiber-optic cable contributed to a catastrophic crash of telecommunications systems across New Zealand's North Island this week, Telecom Corp. said. 

The rats attacked a cable in a steel duct on a bridge north of the capital Wellington, playing a key role in an outage that shut down the nation's stock exchange and crippled telephone, mobile, Internet and electronic banking services to about 100,000 customers for more than four hours Monday, Steve Fuller, the company's general manager of network delivery told The New Zealand Herald.