DAWSON CITY – Dawson City was cut off from telephone, Internet and cell phone service from mid-morning Saturday until about 1:30 a.m. Sunday.

In local experience with Northwestel Inc. and Bell Mobility, it’s rare that they both quit working at the same time.

Generally, losing the phone line and the bundled Internet connection leaves a person with the option of using a cell phone for calls and for a very sluggish link to the web.

This time, everything was gone – all over town.

Initial attempts this morning to get an explanation from Northwestel retrieved an inaccurate, day-old phone message that said services in both Whitehorse and Dawson were disrupted on the old DSL system on Saturday.

After persistant calls and emails, the following corrected message came from Andrew Anderson, Northwestel’s director of communications, at about 11 a.m. today – almost 48 hours after the services failures began.

“Over the weekend, fibre infrastructure between Whitehorse and Dawson was damaged by third party highway construction leading to the disruption of telecommunications services in Dawson City,” Anderson wrote.

“Government and emergency services were notified, and technicians were able to repair the damage overnight and fully restore service. 

“We know how important telecommunications are to people’s lives, and we thank our customers for their patience over the weekend,” Anderson concluded.