Bell warns copper theft on the rise, hotspots in Ontario, N.B., Quebec

Montreal-based national telecom Bell warns that copper theft is on the rise, putting public safety and communications infrastructure at risk.

Copper theft incidents involve people stealing the wires used in infrastructure, such as telecommunications lines, in order to sell them. These thefts are driven by the high value of copper, which is widely used for power infrastructure, construction, electronics, and more.

Bell claims that copper thefts are up 23 per cent compared to last year, with 500 cases already in 2025. The telco named Ontario, New Brunswick, and Quebec as hotspots for theft — Ontario leads with 63 per cent of all copper thefts. Hotspots in Ontario include Hamilton, Cambridge, and Windsor.

New Brunswick saw 80 incidents of copper theft this year already, 80 per cent of which happened in the Fredericton-Oromocto corridor. Copper thefts also happened in the communities of Stanley, Hoyt, Fredericton Junction, and Keswick Bridge.

Bell is raising the alarm on the issue and calling on provincial and federal governments to increase protections for critical infrastructure by increasing penalties and amending the Criminal Code. The company also called on the public to report suspicious activity near telecom infrastructure, like unmarked vehicles, individuals tampering with utility poles, or the sound of cutting or grinding metal.

It’s not a huge surprise to see Bell highlighting this issue. Over the last few years, we’ve covered several different incidents of copper and cable theft at Bell. In 2023, the company sued a copper thief and asked for government help protecting its network. Throughout 2023 and 2024, the company had outages in St. Catharines and Brantford, Ont. caused by cable theft, and the company started deploying aerial alarms to deter theft. Bell isn’t the only one facing these issues — copper thieves recently left an Alberta community without cell service after they took down a cell tower.

And while not necessarily theft, Bell has had other network issues this year. In February, the company reported that a fibre cable running across the Cabot Strait from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia was cut twice in 2024. Bell also had a massive, multi-province outage caused by an update pushed to its routers in May.

Beyond calling on the government and the public to help, Bell also detailed steps it’s taking to address rising cable theft. These include installing alarms that can alert police if they detect infrastructure tampering, deploying additional security guards and surveillance cameras, and accelerating its transition to an all-fibre network. Interestingly, Bell says 60 per cent of its network footprint is now fibre.

Notably, that last point is a bit misleading, given that Bell is very publicly fighting back against the CRTC’s wholesale fibre ruling by pulling investment in fibre. I’m not sure how the company can simultaneously accelerate and slow its fibre rollout.

Anyway, copper isn’t the only theft that Bell’s dealing with right now. The company also recently started locking new phones to its network for 60 days to prevent theft, despite the CRTC requiring carriers to sell “all newly purchased devices unlocked.”

Source: Bell