A widespread service disruption impacting Bell Canada customers was caused by a technical issue and has now been fixed, the company says.
More than 138,000 customers reported problems accessing Bell Canada landline and mobile services as of 9:30 a.m. on May 21, according to
Downdetector. The connection issues primarily impacted customers in Ontario and Quebec.
“Bell conducted an update that impacted some of our routers,” company spokesperson Tianna Goguen told The Epoch Times in an email. “We rolled back the update to quickly restore services.”
Goguen said the disruption was caused by a technical issue and the company has ruled out any cybersecurity threats. The company also said that its network teams are conducting a “full review” to avoid similar situations.
“We can confirm that services have been fully restored as of 11:00am ET,” Goguen said. “We apologize for the inconvenience caused and thank customers for their patience.”
About 61 percent of Bell customers said they were having trouble with landline internet, 11 percent said they were not able to access mobile internet, and 28 percent reported a “total blackout,” according to Downdetector.
The problems were focused on Ontario, Toronto, Brampton, Montreal, Ottawa, Mississauga, North York, Kitchener, Ottawa, and Hampton, according to Downdetector.
Customers of other mobile internet providers also reported outages during the same timeframe, including more than 5,000 Rogers customers. Those reporting problems were in the same areas as the Bell customers facing service outages.
More than 2,500 Telus customers also said they were experiencing service disruptions. The company told The Epoch Times in an email that some customers in Eastern and Atlantic Canada were experiencing internet and wireless outage “due to a Bell network disruption.”
Telus said that services were restored and advised any customers who are experiencing connectivity issues to reboot their devices.
Nearly 100 Virgin Mobile users also reported issues. Of those reporting service disruptions, 44 percent said they were facing mobile internet outages, 22 percent said they had no signal, and 33 percent said they were experiencing a “total blackout.”
Virgin said on its website that some members in Ontario and Quebec may be experiencing an “Internet service interruption.” “We are working to restore service as quickly as possible,” the company said.
Customers of Scotiabank have also reported experiencing similar disruptions to online services over the past 24 hours, according to Downdetector.
More than 650 customers were reporting problems, including 55 percent unable to connect via mobile internet. Thirty-six percent said they were unable to conduct online banking, with another nine reports of problems logging into accounts online.
A spokesperson for the bank said the problems with mobile services occurred between 8:15 a.m. and 9 a.m. ET, but that the issue has been “fully resolved.”
