Another day, another severed cable
Cellphone service provided by Northwestel Inc. was interrupted this morning after a fibre optic line was cut in Edmonton at 9 a.m., the company explained in a brief advisory this morning.
Cellphone service provided by Northwestel Inc. was interrupted this morning after a fibre optic line was cut in Edmonton at 9 a.m., the company explained in a brief advisory this morning.
Service was restored late in the morning, though it was unclear early this afternoon if it was fully restored.
The disruption affected customers in the Yukon, northern B.C., the N.W.T. and Nunavut.
“Some northern customers also experienced temporary congestion impacting other telecommunications services, including Internet and video services as a result of this fibre cut,” the company explained.
Northwestel had no other details on how the fibre line was cut.
Today’s loss of service comes two weeks after a major outage in service for several hours after the line was cut Aug. 1 by a road construction crew working along the Alaska Highway in northern B.C. between Muncho Lake and the Liard Hot Springs.
Cobalt Construction of Whitehorse was responsible for the Aug. 1 loss of service, the federal government confirmed.
Comments (5)
Up 4 Down 0
Jesse on Aug 19, 2016 at 7:44 pm
This is what happens when one company owns all of the infrastructure
Up 15 Down 3
um... on Aug 16, 2016 at 10:42 pm
NorthwesTel doesn't provide cell phone service any more..... remember?
CBC says there was a line cut in Alberta that belongs to another company.... sheesh
Up 20 Down 4
Architecture oversight on Aug 16, 2016 at 10:04 pm
Why would a fibre cut in Edmonton stop me, living in Whitehorse, from calling someone else in Whitehorse (including 911)? Now that 911 has been rolled out across the territory and they can finally validly charge everyone extra fees for it, it's frustrating that something happening 2,000kms away can stop it from working. Sounds like the entire architecture is set up with so many critical failure points that it's just completely designed to fail if there are any issues in NWTel's operating area, which is so vast it is inevitable.
Up 21 Down 6
yukon 56 on Aug 16, 2016 at 5:57 pm
The most expensive service anywhere and this is what we get
Up 16 Down 3
Thomas Brewer on Aug 16, 2016 at 5:04 pm
While this guy doesn't understand cell network topology, it really doesn't make sense why we couldn't call or text within Whitehorse... Perhaps NWTel would be able to address this question?