Telus battles 400% increase in copper wire thefts in Calgary, as thousands left without phone service

Telus is battling a 400 per cent increase in major copper wire thefts and vandalism in Calgary this year, as thousands of Calgary customers have been left without access to landline, internet and cable service in recent months.

The company has seen 20 significant incidents in Calgary in 2023, compared with four incidents in the previous year.

But it isn't just a Calgary problem — the number of incidents across the country has increased by 103 per cent this year.

Brian Lakey, vice-president of Telus's reliability centre of excellence, told CBC News in an interview that there have been 57 significant incidents causing customer impacts in Canada this year, compared with 28 last year.

"We see about 68 million minutes of customer outage and degradation attributed to cable theft and that's about an increase of 750 per cent year over year," said Lakey, who also co-chairs the Canadian Telecom Network Resiliency Working Group.

Lakey says the thefts are also becoming larger, which affects more customers and takes longer to repair. The vandalism often also takes out cell towers and power lines, he said.

"When this happens, customers are without emergency services — so without access to 911, be that the ambulance, fire department, police — and if it's impacting both their cellular service and their landline, they have no way of calling for help."

An additional challenge Telus faces with copper wire thefts is that they don't know it happens until someone calls to flag that they've lost service, says Brian Lakey. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)

As of Sunday, nearly 3,000 residents in the southeast community of Ogden didn't have access to home phone service, said Lakey. The outage started on the morning of Dec. 8 and isn't expected to be resolved until Dec. 22, according to the company's website.

In August, a similar outage occurred in a number of northwest communities after a copper cable theft in Bowness, which disrupted services for a few hundred customers.

Smaller disruptions

Copper wire thefts don't always affect hundreds or thousands of residents.

Earlier this month, Steve Tarzwell — who doesn't own a cell phone — went 12 days without service on his landline phone. He also lost his internet connection for a couple of days.

Tarzwell, who lives in Calgary's northeast community of Martindale, says he only heard of a few neighbours affected by this particular outage.

"It basically reminded me that it's not 100 per cent guaranteed, the service that you have," said Tarzwell.

He says it's concerning that he wouldn't have been able to contact emergency services if he needed, but he realizes the impact was likely much worse on others — like seniors who couldn't get in touch with their loved ones and people who needed to call to get their prescriptions filled and delivered.

"It was kind of more frustrating that I was paying for a service but I wasn't getting it."

Copper's value on the scrap market is fuelling a theft problem across the country. (CBC)

Tarzwell made a formal complaint with the Canadian Commission for Complaints of Telecom-television Services, a trick he says he learned while working for a telecommunications company in British Columbia.

The day after his phone service was restored, he received an email from Telus with promises of credit for the disrupted service.

He has since received the compensation, and says in hindsight, he's satisfied with the outcome.

Ramping up security measures

As for Lakey, he says Telus has specialized teams working around the clock, when possible, to make repairs and get customers back in service as quickly as they can.

The company is also ramping up security around high-activity areas and working with local and federal authorities to prevent the thefts, he says.

"I would also say that if people see something suspicious, because in some cases, these copper thefts take a couple days to set up and get ready … call Crime Stoppers or local authorities," said Lakey.

He says a big red flag is if people are working around utility poles without a truck nearby that displays the Telus logo, or the logo of another utility provider.

Lakey also says he apologizes to all Telus customers who have been impacted by outages.

"An obligation I take very seriously in my role is making sure that our customers can communicate and most importantly can communicate in an emergency situation. It is our responsibility, my responsibility to make sure that happens."