Police investigate theft that downed the phone lines of hundreds of Calgarians

Rebecca Nguyen says there's usually a stack of faxes on Monday mornings at the office she manages in the northwest community of Montgomery, but not this week.

Nguyen, officer manager at Riverview Medical Services, is among the hundreds of Telus customers in northwest Calgary without service on landline phones, internet and cable after a copper cable theft earlier in the week.

"I've been calling patients with my private cell a one-way contact right now. I can contact them, they can't contact me, and the doctor's been giving his personal line, which is probably stressful," she said in an interview with CBC Wednesday.

In an outage listing on its websiteThursday, Telus says the situation now affects home phone services only and may impact customers' ability to reach emergency services.

For Nguyen, that's a concern.

"I did inform them, 'Hey, we're [a] medical service. This kind of needs to be a priority,'" Nguyen said. "We have urgent lines in case there are medical emergencies where the doctors need to respond."

Telus said that on Saturday, vandals had cut and stolen several sections of cables near the old pedestrian bridge in Bowness, which disrupted services for a few hundred customers.

The company says it's working to restore the service to affected residents and businesses in Dalhousie, Varsity and Bowness.

"We want our customers to know our technicians continue to work around the clock and we hope to begin restoring service to affected customers as soon as possible," according to a statement from Telus.

Calgary police said on Saturday, police were called to the 5800 block of Bowness Road N.W. for reports of theft of copper cable at a Telus operations site. They added that the estimated damage is $100,000, and the investigation is ongoing.

The company'swebsite said the estimated time of repair is Sept. 1.