The Canadian Telecommunications Association (CTA) has called for tougher measures to deter the theft of copper cables.

The trade association estimates that such incidents have increased by 200 percent each year from 2021 to 2023.

Copper theft is a big issue for the telecoms industry, and although it's not unique to Canada, the country has seen a rise in such incidents.

One of the big impacts of copper theft is the downtime caused by cutting the cables that connect networks, leading to outages.

“It’s something we’ve seen over the past couple of years, quite a substantial increase in instances of vandalism and theft affecting telecommunications infrastructure. It’s not restricted to cell towers,” said senior vice-president for the Canadian Telecommunications Association (CTA), Eric Smith, as reported by Town and Country Today.

“The target in most cases, is cable copper wire that they want to sell for scrap metal to make money.

“They’re not really trying to get the fiber (optic) lines, 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 noted that the crimes are "not victimless," and have a much bigger impact than thieves think.

He's suggested that the government should increase the fine for people caught stealing copper, noting that perpetrators are often charged less than C$5,000 ($3,655).

In 2022, Canadian telco Telus blamed an outage in British Columbia on infrastructure damage caused by attempted copper thieves.

The US and the UK have had multiple copper issues, while in Ghana, a man was sentenced to seven years in prison for helping himself to around $45,900 worth of cable when arrested.