Bell says copper theft took out rural phone lines twice last weekend

Bell Aliant says its crews were on scene Tuesday in the Welsford area responding to a second outage in a week due to what it says is copper theft.

The company said it saw three "acts of copper theft on our network in the Welsford and Youngs Cove areas" last Friday, Bell spokesperson Katie Hatfield said Tuesday in a statement. She said crews "began work immediately" and restored service by last Saturday morning.

"Since then, two additional sections of copper cable have been stolen, once again impacting service for customers in Welsford," she said, saying crews were back on scene and they hoped to have service restored Tuesday.

Welsford is in the Fundy Rural District, near the junction of Highway 7 and Highway 101, about 42 kilometres north of Saint John by highway. Hatfield said it was last affected by copper theft in February.

Micah Williamson, president of the volunteer-driven Welsford Community Association, said the current outage affects residents just outside of Welsford up Highway 101, impacting residents who rely on landlines for phone service.

"Cellular service on the Queen's Ridge Road is spotty at best. A lot of the folks up there have copper-based landlines so that they can have any phone service at all. That's a huge impact," he said.

He said that high-speed DSL lines don't go that far, and that residents in the area may have wireless Internet connections instead, but cell service isn't reliable.

Williamson said there have been issues with the line including the February outage, as well as damage due to trees downed in windstorms.

"The poor line's been repaired and broken a few times in the last 12 months," he said.

He says the area has "good locals" that keep an eye out, but reports of copper theft are concerning because of the potential for it to cross into other types of theft.

"I hope they find who's done it and it stops," Williamson said. "As a fringe consequence, I'd like to have more stable internet and phone service, but if the copper is the problem and it's being stolen, that will probably be resolved by catching whoever stole it."

Hatfield said there have been 1,000 physical security incidents on the Bell network since January 2022, 87 per cent of which is copper theft. She said there was also an outage Monday in Fredericton's Lincoln Road area, which has been restored.

"Network vandalism is a serious issue," Hatfield said, saying that Bell has asked for action from the federal and provincial government to strengthen laws around communications infrastructure.

She says Bell has also added security measures including "aerial alarms," which provide real-time reporting of vandalism incidents in the hope of faster response from law enforcement.

Bell announced in March that it was rolling out the equipment in New Brunswick, and Hatfield said the company plans "to expand deployment to more locations."

Provincial spokesperson Allan Dearing, with the department of justice and public safety, said the province has targeted copper thieves through legal changes, citing the Salvage Dealers Licensing Act, which was amended last March.

The changes "make it harder for copper thieves to sell stolen goods," Dearing said, and mean licensed salvage dealers must record all purchases or deliveries of salvage received, including when it was received, what was in the shipment, who brought it and in what vehicles. Compliance monitoring is done by Inspections and Enforcement New Brunswick, he said.

In February, the provincial department of public safety's <a href="https://tj.news/new-brunswick/province-ramps-up-efforts-to-detect-illegal-copper-wire-sales">deputy minister Mike Comeau told lawmakers that theft of catalytic converters</a> had "all but disappeared" after the changes, but that copper wire is harder to trace. He told a legislative committee that they're still using inspections to test the scope of the copper wire market to determine what changes are needed.

Brunswick News made a request for comment to the RCMP and did not receive a response by press time.

- With files from Savannah Awde

Andrew Bates, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Telegraph-Journal