Power outage at Rogers in parts of North Calgary due to copper wire theft, company says

According to Rogers Communications, the outage to television, internet and home phone services in North Calgary was caused by a fiber optic failure during an attempt to steal copper wire.

Spokesman Cam Gordon said in an emailed statement that customers in the Mount Pleasant, Tuxedo Park and Crescent Heights neighborhoods were affected and that about 15,000 customers were affected.

“Multiple technical teams are on site and working to restore service as quickly as possible,” Gordon wrote in the email.

“We apologize to our affected customers for the inconvenience and will keep them updated on our progress.”

Gordon indicated that the attempted theft occurred on Sunday night.

Gordon said in the statement, which was sent Monday morning, that Rogers was working on a temporary fix and that the company expected some customers to have their service restored within five hours.

But after the first deadline passed, some people in the Bridgeland neighborhood were still without service Monday afternoon.

The company said in an email around 11:30 p.m. that service had been restored to all customers.

‘I have had zero connectivity’

Robert Betteridge, a retired attorney who lives in the northeast neighborhood, said he lost connection Sunday night.

“I happened to be up late and all of a sudden my internet connection went down, and I thought it was gremlins.… I went to bed and woke up this morning and the same problem happened. I couldn’t connect to anything at all… and today I haven’t connected at all.”

He said that the power outage was at most an inconvenience for him, but that it did affect the sales of nearby shops.

“I walked over to Bridgeland Market down the street and all their systems were down because they had no connectivity. And I walked over to another store across the street and their systems were down and no one could figure out why. They were reduced to pen and paper.”

Betteridge’s wife, who has a doctor’s office nearby, told him she had to use her mobile phone hotspot on Monday to carry out her duties as a GP.

“A lot of people are going to be very angry that they’ve lost revenue and been charged for services they didn’t receive,” Betteridge said.

Gordon said in his statement that Rogers has seen an increase in power outages caused by vandalism since 2022.