Copper thieves knocking out phone and internet service in northeast London

Residents along London’s Killaly Road are frustrated with what they’re calling ‘rampant copper thefts’ in the area. CTV London’s Bryan Bicknell has more.

A resident of a rural section of northeast London is sounding the alarm over what he says is rampant copper theft along his roadway.

His concerns come on the heels of a new report from Ottawa that calls copper theft a ‘threat to public safety.’

“Looks like copper thieves. On this occasion they have actually cut down the pole that supports all the copper lines for the internet and the phones and whatnot,” explained Matthew Beingessner, as he investigated the latest case of suspected copper theft from a utility line along Killaly Road.

He says it happened sometime early Thursday and is the third such incident in the past two weeks.

“I give a shout out to the wonderful Bell techs that have been running here and fixing things every time it happens. They’re great, but they’re frustrated,” Beingessner said.

Along a stretch of Killaly Road, east of Highbury Avenue, there is no shortage of evidence that utility equipment may have been tampered with. Severed wire hangs from posts with the insides exposed, while thick wire is down to shreds in several places along the post line. At one suspected theft site, a pair of wire cutters is discovered, left behind on the ground.

“Everything to the east side here is completely interrupted, so there’s no internet, there’s no Fibe, there’s no landlines, there’s no fax machines,” said Beingessner.

“And a lot of cases, when there’s a house removed from an entrance gate the access cannot be granted to people visiting, packages and whatnot, because of access through a landline.”

His concerns come as a new Senate of Canada report sheds light on how widespread the problem of copper theft has become. Released this week, the report Stolen Signal: The Costly Consequences of Copper Theft in Canada says there’s an urgency to act due to the impact of stolen copper on telecommunication outages, which sometimes leave areas without phone and internet services, and no access to 911.

Senator Paula Simons says it’s “a little outside the box” for the senate’s transport and communications committee to look at a criminal law issue.

“But because copper wire theft has such a devastating impact on communications infrastructure across the country, we wanted to take a moment to see what we could do to bring an understanding of why this was such a problem and what could be done about it,” said Simons.

According to the report, the telecommunications industry estimates a 200 per cent increase in theft and vandalism incidents from 2022 to 2024. It considers these crimes that threaten public safety and human life.

The Senate report makes three recommendations:

• That the Government of Canada amend the Criminal Code to impose more serious penalties for metal theft that causes damage to critical or essential infrastructure.
• That the Government of Canada encourage the provincial and territorial governments to regulate the sale of scrap metal, including by keeping a record of transactions and the origin of the met
• That the Government of Canada create a task force on metal theft to promote information sharing among law enforcement agencies.

As for Beingessner, he’s hoping the observations and experiences of his family and neighbours along Killaly Road help to bring more attention to the issue.

“What do we do? We post cameras and live in a police state. I don’t know. We’ve done our part. We’ve reached out, we’ve reported to London Police, who’ve also said that Bell reports every time that there’s an issue as well,” said Beingessner.

More photos are available here.