It was another day of lost business for Josh Anderson when his internet service was suddenly interrupted due to an intentionally cut telecommunication cable.
“I woke up early this morning, had alerts that the internet was down at our small business and, lo and behold, the fibre was down again,” said Anderson.
Kingston Police were called to the area of 2185 Perth Road, north of Kingston, Tuesday morning to investigate theft of a section of Bell telecommunications line.
The cables, much like catalytic converters, have precious metals in them: copper.
Overnight Monday into Tuesday it appears that someone cut down the Perth Road Cables and made off with the copper, much to the chagrin of people like Anderson.
“For businesses out here, it’s crippling. I mean, fibre’s a great service until somebody does this,” added Anderson.
Kingston city councillor Gary Oosterhof, who represents the affected area, said his first concern was peoples’ safety.
“People have certainly seen what’s happening and it’s pretty devastating. I can imagine it’s not going to be easy to fix, so we certainly hope that this doesn’t happen again,” he said.
A representative from Bell Canada told Global News in a statement:
“In this latest incident, thieves cut down a section of telecommunications cable to steal the copper wire, disrupting service for more than 1,000 customers.”
The statement also said that this is one of over 400 similar incidents country-wide since January of 2022, including 180 in Ontario alone.
It’s a problem that Oosterhof and Anderson said needs a solution.
“There are measures that, you know, could be implemented I think to make it less attractive to be stealing copper,” said Oosterhof.
“I feel like more regulation around the recycling and scrap industries, it’s the same situation of stealing catalytic converters. It’s the same,” added Anderson.
Kingston Police said that the matter has been handed over to an investigator, and Bell is urging anyone who sees suspicious activity around electric lines to call police.