Copper thieves cut internet, TV, and landline services in Oromocto, N.B., area
Bell Aliant says repeated incidents of copper theft are disrupting internet, television, and landline phone connections to New Brunswick customers around Oromocto and Lincoln.
The latest incident happened Tuesday around 8 a.m.
Bell Aliant (a subsidiary of Bell, which is the parent company of CTV), says about 850 customers are affected by the outage, adding it may take until 11 p.m. Tuesday for all services to be restored.
"We’ve been exposed to a rash of vandalism, particularly in the last four to six weeks, of thieves looking to steal copper from our outside plant network," says Dana Lohnes, Bell’s director of field operations in Atlantic Canada.
Lohnes says there’s been as many as 35 separate incidents in recent weeks.
"Each of those acts of vandalism results in multiple customers being taken out of service,” says Lohnes. "In some cases, up to a couple thousand customers at a time for each of the separate acts of vandalism.”
Impacted customers tell CTV News some services outages have lasted a day or longer.
The RCMP confirms its ongoing investigation of telecommunication outages from two days: Nov. 24 (in the Broad Road area), and Tuesday.
"We were also advised by the provider that a pole on Black Watch Avenue in Oromocto was damaged due to mischief,” says Cpl. Terry Densmore of the Oromocto RCMP. "Police attended that location today and confirmed that someone had cut and stolen the wires from this pole causing the disruption."
Lohnes says Bell Aliant has installed surveillance cameras and alarms around the area.
"We’ve had roving patrols where we’ve had our local management team, as well as some security companies literally driving the streets in some of these high targeted areas trying to catch people in the act,” says Lohnes. “We have also upped our surveillance in terms of the amounts of cameras that we’ve had installed."
"We have alarming on all our network. So when we lose certain elements of the network it alarms to a common alarm centre. We’ve had that alarm centre on high alert so when they see alarms in these particular regions, they call our roaming patrols who will then call the RCMP directly.”
Cpl. Densmore says anyone who witnessed suspicious activity around the Broad Road area of Oromocto on Nov. 24, or Black Watch Road area of Oromocto Nov. 29, should contact them.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
'It could be catastrophic': Woman says natural supplement contained hidden painkiller drug
A Manitoba woman thought she found a miracle natural supplement, but said a hidden ingredient wreaked havoc on her health.
After hearing thousands of last words, this hospital chaplain has advice for the living
Hospital chaplain J.S. Park opens up about death, grief and hearing thousands of last words, and shares his advice for the living.
WHO likely to issue wider alert on contaminated cough syrup
The World Health Organization is likely to issue a wider warning about contaminated Johnson and Johnson-made children's cough syrup found in Nigeria last week, it said in an email.
WATCH Video shows dramatic police takedown of carjacking suspects chased through parking lot north of Toronto
Police have released video footage of a dramatic takedown of a group of teens wanted in connection with an attempted carjacking in Markham earlier this month.
Canada, G7 urge 'all parties' to de-escalate in growing Mideast conflict
Canada called for 'all parties' to de-escalate rising tensions in the Mideast following an apparent Israeli drone attack against Iran overnight.
'It was all my savings': Ontario woman loses $15K to fake Walmart job scam
A woman who recently moved to Canada from India was searching for a job when she got caught in an online job scam and lost $15,000.
Families to receive Canada Child Benefit payment on Friday
More money will land in the pockets of some Canadian families on Friday for the latest Canada Child Benefit installment.
After COVID, WHO defines disease spread 'through air'
The World Health Organization and around 500 experts have agreed for the first time on what it means for a disease to spread through the air, in a bid to avoid the confusion early in the COVID-19 pandemic that some scientists have said cost lives.
American millionaire Jonathan Lehrer denied bail after being charged with killing Canadian couple
American millionaire Jonathan Lehrer, one of two men charged in the killings of a Canadian couple in Dominica, has been denied bail.