Canada has seen an increase in incidents of theft and damage caused by copper thieves, reports Town and Country Today. In response, CTA Senior VP Eric Smith said that the Canadian Telecommunications Association is taking steps to ramp up awareness of the problem. He would like to see an informed public notify law enforcement when they see an incident occur to help minimize extensive vandalism and signal outages.
“They’re not really trying to get the fiber [optic] lines,” explained Smith. “They’re seeking the copper but fiber often gets cut in the course of those activities and obviously, the implications are for the affected community. Depending on what gets cut, it could be phone line outages, internet outages.” Smith continued, noting “The target in most cases, is cable copper wire that they want to sell for scrap metal to make money.”
The CTA is also lobbying the government for stiffer penalties for cell tower miscreants, according to Town and Country Today. Smith said that current fines are frequently assessed at $5,000 or less, roughly akin to what a bicycle thief would see. The difference, said Smith, is that the damage inflicted on cell towers can pose a safety threat when connections to emergency services are cut. Repairing the damage also costs telecoms much more in repairs than it would cost to replace a stolen bicycle.
“Accumulatively, the industry is spending millions of dollars in repairs and they’re also looking at different ways to help monitor their networks, protect their networks, increasing security so that’s additional costs,” stated Smith. “It’s a very expensive endeavor. Then there’s also the indirect costs to the community,” he added, pointing to how service disruptions cause ongoing problems for first responders and medical communities. “It’s a very significant impact on the community. “It’s bad now,” said Smith on behalf of the CTA. “We don’t want to see it get worse, and that’s why we’re asking everyone to work together on this.”
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