Northwestel says Inuvik telecoms outage resolved
Telecom hasn't said what caused the outage
A spokesperson for Northwestel says a telecommunications disruption that affected cellular calling in Inuvik has been resolved, but that the company isn't able to share the cause of what happened.
According to an RCMP advisory shared to Facebook by the Inuvik Fire Department around 10 a.m. Thursday, the outage started just after 8 a.m.
While the police advisory said that 911, phones and internet might be impacted — with service either down or operating periodically — a spokesperson for Northwestel said in an email that calls between landlines, including calls that are long-distance, internet and TV were working normally.
Northwestel updated its own Facebook post about the outage, saying it had been resolved, at around 12:45 p.m.
Police had said that people with urgent issues were being asked to go directly to the Inuvik RCMP detachment if their call hadn't gone through, while the fire department said that people could also go to the fire hall or town hall in case of emergency.
In a press release issued before 11:30 a.m., police also said they'd increased their number of patrols in the community and that people could flag them down if needed.
Around 1 p.m., the RCMP said the detachment is receiving calls again and people no longer need to go in person if they need police.