Rogers is out of business due to a copper wire theft north of Calgary, the company said

Rogers Communications reports that television, internet and home phone services in north Calgary are out due to fiber being cut during an attempt to steal copper wire.

In an emailed statement, spokesman Cam Gordon said customers in the Mount Pleasant, Tuxedo Park and Crescent Heights areas were affected and about 15,000 customers were affected.

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

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

Gordon said the burglary happened Sunday night.

In a statement sent out Monday morning, Gordon Rogers said it was working on a temporary solution and that some customers could expect to have their connections restored after five hours.

But that initial deadline had passed, and some near Bridgeland were still without service as of Monday afternoon.

Robert Betteridge, a retired lawyer who lives in the Northeast District, said he lost contact Sunday night.

“I was up late and all of a sudden my internet connection went down and I just chalked it up to gremlins…. I went to sleep and woke up this morning with the same problems. I had no connection to anything. … and I had zero connection today.”

He said the outage was annoying for him, but it affected business for nearby stores.

“I walked across the street to Bridgeland Market and all their systems were down because they had no communication. And I walked across the street to another store and their systems were down and no one understood why. They went to pen and paper.”

Betteridge's wife, who runs a nearby medical facility, told him on Monday that he had to use his cell phone hotspot to attend to his duties as a family doctor.

“A lot of people are very upset about losing income and being charged for services they didn't receive,” Betteridge said.

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

As of about 5 p.m. Monday, Rogers said service had been restored to some customers and the estimated time for full service to be restored was 10 p.m.