I was also affected. My favourite part, though, was when I phoned my ISP to check on a resolution time and was greeted by a phone recording telling me about the outage and how it was affecting Internet services in both Ontario and Quebec. 

And then in a moment of sensational stupidity, they added, "to find out more, go this web address," followed by the URL. 

How am I supposed to go to the web address when my Internet is down? 

They didn't answer that question.

[Extreme head shake]

I was out for about 30 minutes as well...I'm on Bell Fibe in Etobicoke.

RadioActive wrote:

How am I supposed to go to the web address when my Internet is down?

You use your phone data.

That doesn't make any sense to me - but my phone is with Freedom Mobile. Data is always available to use when WiFi is not.

My phone flips back and forth automatically.

Last edited by Binson Echorec (May 21, 2025 10:58 am)

RadioAaron wrote:

Landline phones were out, not cellphones, I think.

Well, even I'm not sure how to get to a URL with a landline!

RadioAaron wrote:

Binson Echorec wrote:

RadioAaron wrote:

Landline phones were out, not cellphones, I think.

Well, even I'm not sure how to get to a URL with a landline!

It involves dialing a LOT of 0's and 1's

LOL - total nightmare on a rotary dial.

And it's over. The usual "update that went wrong" is blamed. 

Bell says full internet, mobile service restored after outage in Ontario and Quebec
 

From what I am reading in this thread, Bell is better than Rogers for avoiding total shut down for great lengths of time, but they still can't claim that their service never goes down.

Forgot to mention this on Wednesday, but I was out walking the dog before the relentless rain began and listening to Ben Mulroney's show on AM640. Around 9:30 AM, he suddenly started to sound a bit perturbed. He was throwing out topic after topic, and getting no phone calls. 

Finally his producer discovered the Bell outage, which explained who their provider is and why the calls stopped. A relieved Mulroney admitted on air that he was happy to at least know what was going on, saying something like 'I was tap dancing like crazy, introducing topics that should have gotten great response and no one was calling. At least now I know why!'

He then proceeded to do a bit of monologue for a few minutes, before giving out an alternate phone number I've never heard before, and the show went on as close to normal as possible.  

I wonder if any other stations were caught by the no-phone zone that fortunately was cleared up quickly. I can only imagine what it must be like to do a phone-in show and discover there are no phones!

Binson Echorec wrote:

I once worked a four hour show with no phones. Host, content producer and I were just wiped afterward from all the chin wagging.

We had emails to read but no texting. The outage was bad enough to knock out the POTS back up.

I was producing a show a long time ago and we had a very special guest, which we promoted the hell out of. It was a big deal. But on the day of his appearance, the phones inside the station were down somehow. (This was pre-Internet, so no texts.) We could take calls, but the guest, who was on the phone, couldn't hear them. 

Try as we might to fix it by air time, the engineers couldn't. So we went on the air having to repeat every question a listener asked. It was awkward and while we made it through, it could have gone a lot more smoothly if not for the technical snafu, which wasn't fixed until the next day. 

And believe me when I say the guest was a big get. It was one of the last ever spoken appearances by an ailing Muhammad Ali.