On Thursday afternoon – yet again – thousands of Yukoners found themselves unable to make phone calls or gain Internet access after an underground fibre optic cable was cut in northern B.C. This time, the inconveniences lasted about four hours.
“Northern B.C. and Yukon experienced disruptions to Internet, voice, and video services, which also impacted their ability to call 911,” said Catherine Newsome, Northwestel Inc.’s marketing and communication director.
Due to the last interruption in services, some businesses in the city stopped accepting credit card and debit payments, and could only accept cash.
According to the Newsome, roadwork in northern B.C. is to blame, as has been the case several times over the past few years. This time, the company’s fibre optic infrastructure was damaged by the roadwork north of Fort Nelson, B.C., near the Steamboat area.
This began to impact some areas after 5 p.m., and services started to recover around 9:30 p.m.
Full restoration of all services was completed at around 3 a.m. today after crews worked on repairs overnight.
There is no information on specifically who damaged the fibre line nor if the road construction team was aware of the fibre line where they were working, Newsome told The Yukon Star this morning.
Service failures have become more frequent in the last couple of years. Newsome explained part of the reason for this would be the more frequent wildfires in the area.
“There were impacts from fires that affected our network in early May, and this is the second impact we’ve seen,” she said. (Thousands of residents of the Yukon and the Northwest Territories lost services on a Friday evening and well into the following Saturday in May.)
“Climate change is causing things like flooding and erosion,” said Newsome.
“These sorts of environmental events do impact critical infrastructure, not just telecommunication, but things like power as well. These are on the rise, and we need to be prepared to respond to them,” she added.
For several years, the company has been working with the Yukon government to build a Dempster fibre line, a “fibre ring”, to deal with such issues. This ring can reroute the data traffic in the other direction to ensure that communities in the North can still access services.
The government is projecting the Dempster fibre line to be finished by the end of this year.
Northwestel is also attempting to raise awareness with government and private contractors excavating around critical infrastructure like fibre optic lines.
Although there were “fibre markers” indicating the line’s presence, and a map has been provided to some industry representatives, Newsome said raising awareness and repairing damaged infrastructure could be an ongoing battle.
Meanwhile, Tangerine Technology has issued a statement on the event.
“Internet reliability concerns are nothing new to Yukoners”, notes Martin Lawrie, the company’s chief operating officer.
“Yesterday’s outage, yet again, illustrates how dependent our society has become on being digitally connected.”
He also mentioned that there are more people in the North who have become customers of the U.S. company Starlink.
While Northwestel does have some infrastructure to allow customers to access the Internet via satellite, customers could experience slower Internet access since the company’s focus is on fibre optic line services.
Earlier Thursday, residents in the N.W.T. and Nunavut had experienced interruptions to their long-distance and some calling abilities.
