Rogers outage in parts of north Calgary due to copper wire theft, says company

Rogers Communications says an outage in its TV, internet and home phone services in north Calgary was caused by fibre cut during an attempt to steal copper wire. 

In an emailed statement, spokesperson Cam Gordon said some customers in the Mount Pleasant, Tuxedo Park and Crescent Heights neighbourhoods had been impacted, and that approximately 15,000 customers were affected. 

"Multiple technical teams are on-site and working to restore services as soon as possible," Gordon wrote in the email.

"We apologize to our impacted customers for the inconvenience and will keep them updated on our progress." 

Gordon indicated that the vandalism was discovered early Monday. 

In the statement, which was sent Monday morning, Gordon said Rogers was working on a temporary solution, and that it could expect some customers connectivity to resume in five hours. 

But with that initial deadline come and gone, some in the neighbourhood of Bridgeland were still without services on Monday afternoon.

In an email at about 11:30 p.m. the company said service had been restored to all customers. 

'I've had zero connectivity'

Robert Betteridge, a retired lawyer who lives in the northeast neighbourhood, said he lost connection on Sunday night. 

"I happened to be up late and suddenly my internet connection went down, and I just chalked it up to gremlins.… I went to bed and I woke up this morning and the same issues were arising. I had no connectivity at all on anything … and I've had zero connectivity today."

He said for him the outage was at most an annoyance, but for the nearby shops it was impacting business. 

"I walked to Bridgeland Market down the street and all of their systems were down because they had no connectivity. And I walked across the street to another shop and their systems were down and nobody could understand why. They were reduced to pen and paper."

Betteridge's wife, who runs a nearby medical practice, told him she had to use her cellphone's hot spot to carry out her duties as a family doctor on Monday. 

"A whole bunch of people are going to be really upset about the fact that they have lost revenue and that they've been charged for services that they didn't receive," said Betteridge. 

In his statement, Gordon said Rogers has seen an uptick in outages caused by vandalism since 2022.