Local phone lines down for some Bell Canada customers

Phone lines across Sault Ste. Marie and the surrounding area are down this morning.

Some customers with Bell Canada and Rogers who are making or receiving phone calls are unable to do so, according to Algoma Technology Services owner Ian Grant.

In a phone interview with SooToday, Grant said there’s an ongoing issue with one of Bell Canada’s underlying carriers in the Sault area. They’re actively working to resolve the issue.

"If it's a Bell cellphone, people cannot receive their phone calls," Grant explained. “They can call out as much as they want, but if it’s a Bell cellphone trying to call into IDA for example, you will not be getting through.”

The IT department at the Huron-Superior Catholic District School Board alerted parents by email they’ve been having challenges receiving phone calls this morning.

“Bell Canada is experiencing issues which are affecting the incoming calls to the schools and buildings of the Huron-Superior Catholic District School Board,” they wrote. “This issue is specific to all Bell Canada customers.”

If customers are unable to reach their school using a Bell telephone, the H-SCDSB is advising parents to use a phone whose provider is not Bell or send an email to the school.

All school email addresses are listed on the Board website by clicking here.

IDA Drug Mart general manger Joe Greco alerted his customers of the Bell Canada outage at all three of their locations earlier this morning.

“We have been advised by ATS of a city wide phone disruption,” he wrote. “This is impacting the phones at Wellington Square IDA, Urban Square IDA and Queenstown IDA. We apologize for the inconvenience to our patients.”

It is currently undetermined how many customers are impacted by the issue. There is no timeline when the system will be running to its standard operations again.

“I’m trying to find out when it will be up,” Grant said. “Once there’s an update, we’ll post it on our website. People can go there to see any sort of issue that we have information on. Hopefully later this morning I’ll get an update.”

SooToday has reached out to Bell Canada for comment and is currently waiting for a response.

We will update this story as more information becomes available.