Little story from my past about fiber lines:

A college friend of mine has a family in the construction industry. He works there summers during college. They're contracted out to install a new sign in front of a commercial building in the DC area. They do all the legit stuff a good contractor does (get a survey of area to be dug, pull permits, get the various utilities to mark underground shit in the vicinity). Start digging. Spotter sees a telecom cable by pure luck before it's hit by the backhoe. Stop work. Within minutes of exposing the line, dozens of local police show up. Police escort crew to the station and interview everyone involved (why were you digging there, have you ever left the country, have you recently come into a lot of money, etc). No one explains what's going on. A few hours later they're all released and told to move the sign back a few feet.

My buddy suspects the line was intelligence related. He didn't understand how they knew the line was exposed because they didn't actually cut the line. New permits to install the sign a few feet back came the next morning when it normally takes a week at least.

After that story I'd be a bit afraid to go cutting random fiber lines.

Santa Cruz? That doesn't seem right. Santa Cruz is way out on the coast to the west of Silicon Valley. If anything I'd think the trunk cables would be somewhere in San Jose or maybe Santa Clara (that's an easy mix-up with Santa Cruz).

Can anyone confirm this?

I used to work for Apple and I know trunk cables run to both of their HQs (in Cupertino, next to Santa Clara). And I would imagine some pretty important cables run up the peninsula (through Stanford and some of the important research facilities there).