Internet and phone service in Beaufort Delta and Sahtu regions now restored
Northwestel says an interruption of internet, cellular and phone services in Inuvik, Fort Good Hope, Norman Wells, Tsiigehtchic, Aklavik, Fort McPherson and Délı̨nę was due to a cut fibre optic line, which has now been repaired.
Customers in impacted communities were without service for about a day. Northwestel announced the disruption in a post to Twitter just before 5 p.m. Monday.
Just before 6 p.m. on Tuesday, the company said its technicians confirmed a third party doing construction had cut the fibre line just south of Norman Wells. At the time, Northwestel said workers were aiming to restore services as quickly and safely as possible.
Early Wednesday morning the company announced the fibre line was fixed and services had been restored. Northwestel said throughout the outage it was in regular communication with the government and essential services.
In a news release Tuesday, the N.W.T. RCMP said the outages could be impacting the public's ability to contact police in the event of an emergency.
People were being urged to go directly to their local RCMP detachment if they needed urgent police assistance and were unable to get through to 911 or the RCMP via phone.
