Once again, Innovative Telephone experienced an outage due to copper wire theft to the company’s outside plant telecommunication facilities on the island of St. Croix, the company announced Tuesday.

Monday night, 1,000 feet of 300 pair cable was stolen, leaving more than 175 Innovative Telephone subscribers in Salt River Marina out of telecommunication services. It was the third such incident in a week. Prior incidents include Estate Profit on Nov. 15 and Salt River and Upper Love on Nov. 18. Innovative’s outside plant technical team are on-site and will continue to work diligently until service is fully restored.

It is apparent that the same areas are being targeted by these offenders and are causing a major strain on the company’s economic resources. The company asked residents of St. Croix, especially those who reside in areas where outages have occurred, to be very vigilant.

Purposeful disruption of telecommunication services is a federal offense because it may affect the ability of emergency responders and other individuals to communicate. Innovative said it has enlisted the aid of both local and federal authorities in apprehending the thieves. Innovative officials are encouraging anyone with information concerning the theft to contact the local authorities.