I work as a Corporate Escalation Analyst for a large telecommunications company (RBOT).
Copper is trading at historical highs, up around 41% right now, so high that the company I work for is starting to dig up the old, no-longer-used runs of copper pair trunks.
The company owns hundreds of millions of pounds of the stuff, and it's finally lucrative enough to pull it up.
Starting around 2023 - today, WA state and Oregon have seen a tenfold increase in regional copper trunk theft; that's a $hiton!