Vandalism and an attempted copper wire theft are being blamed for a TV, phone and internet outage that affected Shaw/Rogers customers in north Calgary on Monday.
The service outages in the Mount Pleasant, Tuxedo Park and Crescent Heights neighbourhoods, as well as other parts of north Calgary, happened just after 4 a.m.
Approximately 15,000 customers were impacted by the outage as of 1:37 p.m.
In a statement to Global News, Rogers Communications said the interruption to service was due to “a fibre cut caused by vandalism and attempted theft of copper wire.”
Just before 10:30 a.m., Rogers Communications said it was working on a temporary solution and expected some customers to begin having service again in five hours.
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At around 5:14 p.m., Rogers Communications said technicians were beginning to restore services in the area and the tentative estimate for full restoration was 10 p.m.
“Multiple technical teams are on site and working to restore services soon,” the statement read. “We apologize to our impacted customers for the inconvenience and will keep them updated on our progress.”
Service was restored to all customers late Monday night.
A Calgary Police Service spokesperson told Global News officers responded to reports of a copper wire theft that occurred in the area of 12th Street Northeast and 25th Avenue Northeast at around 10 a.m. The spokesperson said officers are investigating the incident.
Rogers said it is seeing an increase in vandalism-related outages, and has experienced four to five times the increase in outages due to vandalism since 2022.
Outages due to vandalism can take three to four times longer to repair than any other outage due to the extent of the damage, Rogers said. Repairing a damaged fibre line can typically take between eight and 12 hours, according to Rogers.
Global News’ parent company Corus Entertainment is owned by the Shaw family, previously the owners of Shaw Communications.
–With files from Paula Tran, Global News.