Vandalism and an attempted theft of copper wire are being cited as the reasons for a significant disruption to TV, phone, and internet services for Shaw/Rogers customers in north Calgary this past Monday.
The affected areas included Mount Pleasant, Tuxedo Park, Crescent Heights, and other parts of north Calgary, with the outages beginning shortly after 4 a.m. By 1:37 p.m., the disruption had affected around 15,000 customers.
Rogers Communications informed Global News that the service interruption was due to vandalism that led to a fibre optic cable being cut and an attempted theft of copper wire. They mentioned that several technical teams were actively working at the site to restore services as quickly as possible and extended apologies for the inconvenience, promising to keep their customers updated.
The company has reported the incident to local law enforcement. Furthermore, by 10:30 a.m., Rogers Communications announced that it was implementing a temporary fix, with expectations that service restoration for some customers would occur within five hours.
Rogers also noted a rising trend in vandalism-related service disruptions, with incidents increasing four to five times since 2022. Such vandalism incidents typically require three to four times longer to repair compared to other types of outages, with a damaged fibre line taking anywhere from eight to 12 hours to fix.
