Close to 50 Northwestel Inc. customers in Watson Lake are still waiting for phone and Internet services to be restored as technicians continue their efforts to get the system back up and running.

'The technicians have been working pretty long hours,' Northwestel spokeswoman Anne Kennedy said this morning.

A lightning strike brought the entire Watson Lake exchange down last Thursday.

After technicians replaced circuit cards sent from Whitehorse (which involved two deliveries of first older, and then newer cards), it was believed all 1,104 lines in the area had service restored.

Over the Canada Day weekend though, it was discovered customers in the southeast community who have phone and high-speed Internet service through Northwestel were still without any service because of a filter needed to deliver both services to one line.

Northwestel technicians had expected to have the entire system up and running by about 6 p.m. Tuesday.

'We're literally having to rebuild the exchange,' said Kennedy.

Some of the filters have been replaced, with service being restored to the customer.

In other cases, Northwestel staff have to go out to the actual property receiving service to determine if the phone and Internet are working.

In many cases, Northwestel hasn't been able to reach the customer to make that determination.

Among the customers still waiting for service is the Liard First Nation.

'Nobody has been able to call into the LFN,' Kennedy said.

The company's service manager in Whitehorse was headed down to Watson Lake this afternoon with spare parts for the technician set to make an attempt to get the service running again.

If service can't be restored with those parts, Northwestel will install a temporary service for the first nation to provide at least a phone line and some Internet service, while it continues to work on restoring service in the long term.

Kennedy said technicians would have services restored to each customer as quickly as possible.