Cell phone, internet service still out in many parts of Atlantic Canada

Hurricane Fiona wreaked havoc on Atlantic Canada and eastern Quebec last weekend and service for cell and internet customers has still not fully recovered. Authorities could give no predictions on when conditions will be restored. During a Sunday news conference, Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said much of the cause of the outages is a lack of electricity. His colleague Infrastructure Minister Dominic Leblanc urged internet service providers to work together to fill in gaps in connectivity for consumers. One of the largest ISPs, Rogers Communications Inc., said it is working steadily to restore service. To that end it is sending crews from Ontario and Quebec to assist their Atlantic colleagues. “Hurricane Fiona and resulting power outages caused much of the service interruptions for customers across the Atlantic,” a Rogers spokesperson emailed The Wire Report. “Over 90 per cent of services across the region have now been restored and as impacted areas continue to be cleared from downed lines or trees, our local teams will continue to gradually restore services as safely and quickly as possible.” Cell towers default to battery power when the hydro is cut. Rogers is sending generators to cell tower sites to charge batteries until electricity is restored. The company is also giving eligible customers in the region an additional 50 gigabits of mobile data to be used between Sept. 24 to Sept. 28. Fees have been waived for long distance calls within Canada. BCE Inc.’s Bell Canada said it too is relying on generators for backup power. “The majority of our wireless and wireline networks in the Atlantic and Îles-de-la-Madeleine region are operational, including network sites that are on either battery back-up systems or generators due to power outages,” a spokeswoman wrote The Wire Report. “Our teams are working extremely hard in challenging conditions to restore power to the small number of sites still down, and are also working to repair the extensive damage to our poles and wireline infrastructure to get customers connected in their homes and businesses as power comes back over the coming days.” The firm said it is working with other telecom companies and with governments in order to ensure a coordinated response. A message on Eastlink's website says the Bragg Communications Inc. subsidiary is working to restore service but many remain cut off from cell phone and internet coverage. At a Monday news conference, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said lessons were learned from service outages which occurred during Hurricane Dorian in 2019. “Even as the warnings came, we were working with telco providers to ensure that cell phone coverage would remain as best as possibly could,” according to a transcript. “Providers were working together to make sure that if one area went down, others would be there.” Those lessons from three years ago have been implemented and there will be more to learn from this natural disaster, he added. –Reporting by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca and editing by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca.

Cell phone, internet service still out in many parts of Atlantic Canada

News | September 26, 2022

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Cell phone, internet service still out in many parts of Atlantic Canada

News | September 26, 2022

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