A spokesperson for telecommunications provider Northwestel says a 'unique set of circumstances' converged Friday, knocking out internet, cell phone and landline service across parts of the North.A Northwestel building in Norman Wells, N.W.T. in the summer of 2022. A spokesperson for the company says a 'perfect storm' knocked out internet, cell phone and landline service across parts of the North over the weekend.
Tammy April, vice president of customer experience with Northwestel, said Yukon's primary fibre line passes through Fort Nelson, B.C. while its backup goes through Jean Marie River and Kakisa in the N.W.T."This is the first time that we've had both our accesses to the Yukon fully severed, since we put in that redundancy," she said. "This was a little bit of a perfect storm.
Genevieve Bessette was at Whitehorse's community radio station Saturday using a free Starlink hotspot that had been set up. The student from Ottawa was "mostly rolling with" the outage, but wanted to get in touch with family members back home.Yellowknife has a single fibre line running out of the city, and April said that makes it "vulnerable" to outages.
Yukon, on the other hand, with its two fibre lines is generally well protected, said April. She said there was a fairly small chance something like the weekend outage would happen in the territory again."This incident right now is something to be concerned about," he said in an interview on Saturday. But, he said, there are things to be learned from it which can help shape the way things work in the future.
"How can we build up those systems to be more redundant," he asked. "Our whole life is dependent on communications and technology now."