Some residents in Canada's Thorhild County, Alberta, have been without cell phone coverage for weeks after vandals downed a Telus-owned cell tower.

As reported by Global News Canada, residents have struggled to make phone calls since the tower was attacked by copper thieves on June 14.

The Telus tower had stood (pictured) at 350ft on Range Road 233, before vandals stripped the structure of its copper.

Telus has reported the issue to the police, as the incident continues an unwanted trend for the telecoms tower industry.

The incident has also left people unable to contact the emergency services.

As noted by CBC, investigators suspect the vandalism took place around 5:00am, as around 150 local farmers lost service.

Telus told CBC that it has adjusted nearby antennas to mitigate the issue. The carrier said it will build a new tower, which it aims to be completed by September.

"As a temporary solution, our teams have adjusted nearby antennas to provide as much coverage as possible to the community, though there may be some customers who experience intermittent or no service," the spokesperson said.

Earlier this year, another Telus tower was vandalized in Bruderheim, around 45km from Edmonton.

Last year, the Canadian Telecommunications Association (CTA) 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.

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

Earlier this year in the US, two people pleaded guilty to sabotaging a 500ft telecoms tower in Oklahoma last year, as part of their plans to steal copper from the site.

The incident happened in January of last year. The duo felled the 488-foot rod cell tower in Oklahoma, causing an estimated $500,000 in damage.