Businesses, healthcare centres and municipal offices are reporting widespread telephone issues.
All four municipal offices have issued warnings that Bell customers seem unable to connect to their office landlines.
“Bell customers calling on a mobile or landline phone are currently unable to connect. Callers may get a busy signal or a ‘customer not available message’,” states a June 14 media release from the Township of Minden Hills. “Calls placed through other networks such as Rogers, TELUS or NFTC are still connecting.”
The Haliburton Highlands Health Services released a statement regarding similar issues, which seem to be only affecting customers of Bell Canada.
“Work is being done with Bell to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, and HHHS will provide an update when the issue is resolved,” reads a June 13 media release. Calls to emergency services do not seem to be affected.
The Haliburton County Public Library also issued a statement on social media notifying callers of the issue.
The Highlander has been made aware of multiple private businesses and individuals experiencing issues connecting to landlines which use Bell services as well.
A Bell Canada spokesperson said the outages are caused by an issue with Iristel, a company used by Bell Canada to service internet-based phone connection software such as landline messaging systems. No estimated timeline for fixing the issue was given.
An Iristel spokesperson said the company had temporary issues with their network in the County and “asked bell to mitigate the potential issue for their customers by routing the traffic to one of our other interconnect points with them but they refused thus impacting clients. We didn’t have this issue with anyone else other than [Bell] customers.”
The Highlander will provide updates as more information becomes available.
