Service is being restored after widespread phone service outages also affected banks and businesses using the Bell network and even caused problems for emergency responders.
Nova Scotia’s Emergency Health Services tweeted that they were experiencing a “province-wide communications outage” and asked their on-duty crews to return to their stations and monitor their tablets for calls.
The Yarmouth Fire Department had advised their firefighters to keep pagers on as text messages did not work.
The pagers work on VHF but the province’s trunk radio system was also down during the outage.
Bell issued a statement this afternoon that service was restored.
The company said its services in Atlantic Canada are back online following rerouting and repair of network infrastructure.
It says the outage was caused by accidental damage to multiple fibre network links.
Bell services back in Atlantic after reroute and repair due to accidental cable damage. We apologize to customers for the disruption.
— Bell Aliant (@Bell_Aliant) August 4, 2017