Monday, February 3, 2020

Interior BC weather events make for Internet headaches for Northwest


CityWest has provided an update on events from the weekend that have left Internet and data users across the Northwest suffering slower speeds and in some cases no service at all.

In a statement issued this morning CityWest outlined the scope of the problems to the south and how it has impacted their customers.

On February 1st at 1 p.m., a rock slide occurred in North Bend, BC, which cut a fibre line that provides internet and data services to several telecommunications companies, including ourselves. Most of our Internet traffic went through this fibre line to Vancouver.

Once the cut happened, we re-routed our network traffic east through Prince George to Calgary, but unfortunately this part of our network does not have the same bandwidth capacity as the Vancouver link and we are not able to purchase more. Since there is more traffic going through a smaller circuit, this results in congestion across our service area.

The outage has lasted the entire weekend because work crews must first clean up the site to ensure it’s safe for fibre technicians to enter. The last update we received is that technicians should be able to start their work on the afternoon of Feb. 3, and at that time they should be able to provide an estimate when services would be fully restored.

CityWest also notes that for those customers suffering a total absence of internet service they have implemented a solution towards that problem, though the issue of the slower speeds will continue until the necessary repairs to the fibre line are completed in the south.



The North Bend issue, located just north of Boston Bar. is one of a number of fibre related troubles that CityWest highlighted through a number of posts to their Facebook page this week.

Another trouble spot that is outside of the CityWest service region was a fibre cut near Prince George.



The Prince Rupert based communication company also highlights how their plans towards the Connected Coast fibre project along the BC coast will help to alleviate such issues in the future.

For now, customers can consult their Facebook page for the latest updates on the situation, the most recent notes advising that a new update will be delivered early this afternoon.

For more notes related to Communication in the Northwest see our archive page here.

To return to the most recent blog posting of the day, click here.

No comments:

Post a Comment