About 120 Waterdown residents have been without landline service for nearly two months, all because someone decided to steal copper wire from local telecom infrastructure.
Waterdown is a suburb located in the southern part of Ontario, sitting about 60 kilometres west of downtown Toronto as part of the city of Hamilton.
It started April 4 when thieves hit the area’s phone lines, smashing utility boxes and cutting off connectivity for over a hundred customers across the village. For people living on the east side of Waterdown, the outage isn’t just an inconvenience, it’s a real safety issue. If something goes wrong, they can’t call 911, which is obviously troubling.
Getting repairs done hasn’t been simple either. Bell ran into delays getting the permits and scheduling sorted out to access tracks near a railway, which slowed everything down. That said, crews are now on the ground and working to get service back up by end of week.
Bell Canada spokesperson David Marcille said to Flamborough Today, “Copper wire theft is a major criminal offence that severely threatens community safety by knocking out access to 911,” he said, adding that this is “a rapidly growing problem” for the company.
Bell logged 1,275 copper theft incidents across its network in 2025, a 40 per cent jump from the year before. In response, Bell says it’s working with law enforcement and has opened an investigation into the Waterdown theft specifically. Crews are also installing alarms on the lines that will ping police automatically if anyone tampers with the infrastructure. Bell says it plans to pursue full legal action against anyone caught.
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