Telus restores service after outages hit several provinces

Telus said Thursday that all services have been restored after wireless and phone outages disrupted customers in Ontario and Quebec, with the company’s outage map also showing problems in British Columbia and Alberta.

In a statement, a Telus spokesperson said a “small number” of calls in Eastern Canada were interrupted Thursday morning. “All services have been restored, and calls to emergency 911 services remained fully operational,” the statement said. The company said customers in Western Canada were not affected by the same disruption. Telus had not said what caused the problem as of Thursday afternoon.

Reports of trouble began shortly before 9 a.m. ET, when outage tracker Downdetector showed a spike in complaints concentrated in Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver, MobileSyrup reported. Searches for “Telus outage” were among the top trending queries in Canada on Thursday, according to Google Trends.

Telus’s outage page listed a wireless disruption in the Maidstone and Tecumseh area of southwestern Ontario starting at about 9:39 a.m. ET, affecting data, text, voice and 911, the CBC reported. The company said 911 wireless fallback coverage from another carrier was available in that region, and that customers may need to set their phones to automatic network selection for it to work. Windsor police said the outage caused intermittent problems with their non-emergency line, while the city’s emergency line was not affected.

Near Ottawa, Telus reported a failure of outbound calls to landlines that began around 9:14 a.m. ET and appeared to be resolved after 1 p.m., according to the CBC. In Quebec, an outage linked to a damaged cable affected data, voice and text service in Chateauguay, Kahnawake, Lery, Mercier, Saint-Constant and Saint-Remi. MobileSyrup reported that Telus listed that outage as starting Nov. 4 and expected a fix as early as Thursday afternoon.

Telus’s outage site also showed a degradation of wireless service in Vancouver and Whistler that started Nov. 4, with no cause given, MobileSyrup reported. Several long-running home phone, internet and TV outages in Alberta and B.C. were also listed, some dating back to October or earlier. The company has not said whether those are connected to Thursday’s disruption.

The outage comes as Ottawa pushes on telecom policy. The federal government recently unveiled an 18-point telecom competition roadmap, and Telus is also seeking to limit complaints to the telecom ombudsman, a move a law professor has opposed.

Customers who lost service can check the outage page on the Telus website for local updates. Anyone who cannot reach 911 from a mobile phone should try a landline or another carrier’s phone, if one is available.

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Sources: CBC News; MobileSyrup; Google Trends Canada.