At about 2am on Sept. 12, vandals sent a 120-foot communications tower crashing to the ground here.
In grounding the tower, which had communication dishes and cables connected to it, the vandals crashed internet access for 3,000 customers of Everus Communications, of Waterloo.
The tower was located near the intersection of County Roads 7 and 12, between Parker and Alma.
“This is just pure, malicious, deliberate vandalism that has affected 3,000 homes and 7,000 people,” Everus president Richard Cantin said in an interview on Monday.
Everus network servers and other gear were at the equipment shelter attached to the tower, and when the tower came down, the shelter was also disabled.
Cantin estimated the tower damage could run between $100,000 and $150,000 and there could be other costs, too.
All 3,000 Everus customers – Grey, Wellington, Dufferin, Perth, Waterloo, Bruce, Brant, and Oxford Counties – were disconnected from the network.
Workers were at the site within an hour of learning about the problem. The company started repairs on Saturday and worked through Sunday.
By early Monday afternoon, Cantin said 2,400 customers were back on line as the company worked feverishly through the weekend to sort out the mess. He estimated another 400 customers would regain Internet access by the end of the day.
But, he explained, because the company has had to re-route its connections through other towers, none of the users will have their normal high speed Internet. He said the company is working diligently to replace the tower and have everyone back on line with high speed services, but that could take a couple of weeks.
Cantin noted people are unlikely to be able to reach the office by telephone because affected homeowners and internet users have been jamming the lines since the incident.
Cantin said it is difficult to estimate how many customers the company could lose because of the outage; how many are angry and will want a refund or a credit and also how many might leave and not return. He added some might make that decision and not know the problem was not the company’s fault.
Everus was named the preferred high speed wireless Internet provider by Wellington County earlier this year, and then in July in ran into financial problems that caused it to go into interim receivership.
Asked how this latest problem will affect that, Cantin said dryly, “It doesn’t help.”
County council is going to give the company until October to return with a sound business plan, but for now the main focus for Everus is looking after its customers.
Cantin said the tower was engineered with custom made steel, and it would have “stood for years” had someone not undermined its legs and sent it crashing.
Cantin said the county OPP are investigating the sabotage, and several customers have offered him ideas of what to do with the culprits if they can find them before the police do.
The Everus website carries the message of what happened. It stated, “It is believed that the suspects gained access to the tower … and used an angle grinder to sever the bottom legs and fell the tower … Officers stressed that this was a deliberate act and not just the actions of some passersby.”
Cantin made an appeal to anyone who might know something about the crashed tower, to contact the county OPP or to anonymously call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-267-TIPS.
