Since this morning, many Canadians have reported major difficulties accessing the internet, raising concerns about the country’s two main providers: Bell and Telus. Although no official statement was initially released, public data and user reports point to a widespread incident.
Alarming Reports for Bell and Telus
Monitoring platforms like Downdetector show a significant spike in outage reports for Bell, mainly related to wired internet services and complete service disruptions. The issue seems particularly concentrated in Ontario, Quebec, and parts of the Maritimes.
Telus is also seeing an increase in complaints, although these mostly involve mobile services. These incidents appear more scattered, especially across British Columbia and Alberta.
No Early Confirmation, But Signs Point to a Major Outage
For several hours, none of the companies involved released any official comment on social media or to the press. This silence suggested that the outage was either still under investigation or had started as a localized issue that quickly escalated.
Bell Issues an Official Statement
By late morning, Bell issued a formal statement, confirming the problem:
“We are aware of an issue affecting some customers in Eastern Canada. Our technical teams are actively working to resolve it as quickly as possible. We thank our customers for their patience and understanding.”
While the exact cause remains unclear, this confirms the existence of a network issue.
Possible Causes and Ongoing Analysis
In the absence of specific technical details, experts have begun speculating on possible causes, based on past incidents such as the major Rogers outage in 2022. Potential explanations include:
- Network configuration errors (e.g., BGP or DNS)
- Failure in shared infrastructure (e.g., a data center or interconnection point)
- Cyberattack (less likely, but cannot be ruled out)
- Poorly coordinated technical maintenance
The partial overlap in outages between Bell and Telus—while Rogers appears unaffected—is particularly puzzling.
To Be Continued…
This article will be updated as soon as more official information becomes available or the situation evolves.
In the meantime, affected users can try the following:
- Restart their modem or router
- Switch to mobile data if available
