Bell explains reason for huge internet outage across Ontario and Quebec

Bell says an update it made this morning caused the multi-province internet outage that plagued Canadians on Wednesday.

In a statement, the company apologized to customers for the disruption and said service was fully restored as of 11 a.m. EDT.

The statement continues on to say that "Bell conducted an update that impacted some of our routers," and that the company "rolled back the update to quickly restore services."

"We want to assure our customers and partners that this was a technical issue and we have ruled out a cybersecurity incident as the root cause," Bell adds. "Our network teams are conducting a full review to ensure that this situation doesn’t happen again. We apologize for the inconvenience caused and thank customers for their patience."

The issue began around 9 a.m. EDT and impacted Canadians across providers and provinces.

Bell previously confirmed that the outage was impacting customers in Ontario and Quebec. However, reports from people in other provinces and outage sites like Downdetector indicated problems were spread across several provinces.

Massive Bell internet outage hits tens of thousands across Ontario and Quebec https://t.co/vHBiFzOpgh

— blogTO (@blogTO) May 21, 2025

Multiple providers were impacted as well. Telus, which recently launched fibre home internet in Ontario and Quebec running on Bell's lines, also had an outage. In an email, a Telus spokesperson laid the blame on Bell.

"Due to a Bell network disruption, some Telus customers in Eastern and Atlantic Canada experienced an internet and wireless outage this morning beginning around 9:30 a.m. EDT. Services have been fully restored since 11 a.m. EDT. Any customers who continue to experience connectivity issues are advised to reboot their devices," they said.

Anyone still experiencing issues with their Bell or Telus service should try restarting their devices. If that doesn't work, it might be worth trying to get in contact with your provider.