A suspected lightning strike on a microwave tower near Stewart Crossing has affected long distance telephone and Internet services to Dawson City, Mayo and Keno City.

Local calling within each community is not affected, Northwestel Inc. said this morning.

The service outage began at about 3:30 this morning.

"Technicians were called out in Whitehorse early this morning, but were unable to restore services remotely from Whitehorse,” Northwestel said.

A technician is now en route to the site and was expected to arrive at around 12:30 p.m. The types of alarms indicate that services should be restored shortly after the technician arrives, unless the damage is more extensive than the alarms are currently indicating.

The services affected include long distance, cellular phone and data services (including Internet) and point of sale machines, such as debit and credit card services.