bell internet outage

Bell and Telus suffer massive network and service outage in Ontario

Bell and Telus experienced major outages in Ontario today, and customers across the province had their internet access, television, home phone and cell service impacted as a result. 

Customers took to Twitter Thursday afternoon to report the issues, and Down Detector's live outage map showed widespread outages across Ontario and in some places in Quebec. 

bell outage

Down Detector's live outage map

The majority of the problems were reported by customers in Toronto, Ottawa, Brampton, Kitchener, Cambridge, Hamilton, Guelph, Gatineau and Montreal. 

Telus issued a statement on Twitter earlier today acknowledging the outage and stating that their team was investigating. 

"We're aware of a wireless issue impacting several carriers in Eastern Canada. Our team is already investigating and services will be restored as quickly as possible. Thank you," they wrote.

Bell, meanwhile, did not immediately release an official statement, though they did respond directly to some customers' complaints on Twitter. 

"We are aware of the problem and our technicians are currently working on the issue. We recommend that you power cycle your modem periodically to determine if the issue is resolved. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this issue," reads one tweet from the Bell Support account in response to an Ottawa customer who said their router was down. 

The outages appear to be mostly resolved and customers have reportedly gotten service back in most cases, though many are still expressing frustration that Bell stayed silent on the issue for so long while countless paying customers went without internet and cell service.

"@Bell There is a massive outage in Ontario currently for Bell internet service. Why has there not been any kind of message going out via twitter?" asked one Ontarian.

"Well it looks like I have internet back," wrote another, "but still annoyed that @Bell_Support didn't even acknowledge there was an outage or tell their customers what was going on."

At 1:41 p.m., after the majority of service was restored, Bell finally put out a statement.

"Some customers in parts of Eastern Ontario and Québec experienced brief service disruptions earlier today," they wrote. "Service has now been restored. Our team is continuing to investigate the cause."

Lead photo by

Burdifilek


Latest Videos



Latest Videos


Join the conversation Load comments

Latest in Tech

Canadians can get part of $15.2 million eBook price-fixing class-action settlement

Rogers takes huge step in expansion of 5G service across entire TTC subway network

Canadians can claim up to $375 in Yahoo data breach settlement

U.S. electronics chain is opening its first Canadian stores around Toronto

Major failure with emergency alert test has Ontario residents confused and worried

Nearly 100K USB chargers sold on Amazon Canada recalled for 'unreasonable' shock risk

Canada's richest person worth $40B and climbing ranks of world's wealthiest people

Viral video warns Ontario rideshare users about 'cleaning fee scam' on Uber