Cable thieves have caused another outage in British Columbia, Canada.

The incident, reported by CBC, left customers without Internet and phone services across northwestern British Columbia yesterday (August 11).

It's the third reported outage in the last four months across the northwestern part of the region.

BC-based telecoms company CityWest has been impacted by the latest outage. Services went down at around 10am local time yesterday after a fiber cable was cut during a copper theft from a third-party carrier's network in neighboring state Alberta.

In the company's most recent update on its maintenance and outages page on its website, CityWest said it was aiming to restore services by 7pm PT.

"We now have an estimated time of restoration of 7pm today. Technicians remain onsite and are actively working to complete repairs," said the update. No further details have been issued.

The outage has impacted a number of towns in the region, including Terrace, Prince Rupert, Haida Gwaii, the North Coast, Bulkley Valley, and the Nechako and Kitimat Valley.

CBC reports that KPU Communications was also impacted by the fiber cut. The company provides service to some parts of southern Alaska with CityWest. KPU said that a CityWest fiber path through Clinton, B.C., was burned in a wildfire.

Previous outages in the region since May have also been blamed on cable thieves, with carrier Telus twice on the receiving end of the theft.

Copper theft has become a serious headache for mobile carriers and telecoms companies across the globe, given the high street value of the material. However, fiber cables are often mistaken for copper by thieves, leading to network outages and disruption for telcos.

Across the border in the US, telcos have lobbied for tougher punishments for vandalism against network infrastructure.

Update: In a statement to DCD on the afternoon of August 12, CityWest confirmed that all affected services have been restored.

"Yesterday’s outage demonstrates why additional network routes into Northern B.C. are so important. When a major fiber route is damaged, the impact can extend across multiple communities because there are limited alternate paths available to carry that traffic," said Fiona Scrivens, marketing campaign coordinator, CityWest.

Scrivens added that the company is "advancing a new fiber transport route along Highway 37 that will create an additional pathway into Northern B.C." "Once complete, the route will strengthen network resiliency by providing another option for moving traffic when an existing route is disrupted," said Scrivens.

Further details about this fiber transport route will be released about this in the coming weeks.