CityWest has provided more information about what caused a major outage of internet and phone services across Northwest BC Saturday night.
The company says multiple trees came down on hydro lines east of Terrace. The broken lines then burned through the fibre connection which is the main transport for phone, internet, and TV for its customers.
CityWest says most of the internet, TV, and phone data provided to northern BC customers rides on that fibre line, and while some portions of it are buried next to Highway 16, there are some sections strung along telephone poles between Terrace and Prince George.
“This is one of the main reasons we have been working towards a project to lay a subsea fibre connection from Prince Rupert to Vancouver Island,” says Chris Marett, CEO of City West in a news release. “Once it’s built, that subsea fibre line will give us redundancy – so if a cut like this happens, it would switch over to the line going south from Rupert, and our customers’ experience would not be interrupted.
CityWest says services were restored at 2 a.m. in the early morning of Feb. 4.
Some customers in Gossen, Kleanza, and Usk were still without services Sunday, but technicians were on-site working to restore them by the afternoon.