Bell apologizes for internet outage in Ontario, Quebec, details cause

Bell says an update it made this morning caused the multi-province internet outage that plagued Canadians on Wednesday.

In a statement to MobileSyrup, the company apologized to customers for the disruption and said service was fully restored as of 11 a.m. ET. Read the full statement below:

“We would like to apologize for the disruption our customers experienced earlier today due to an internet outage. We can confirm that services have been fully restored as of 11:00am ET. Bell conducted an update that impacted some of our routers. We rolled back the update to quickly restore services. We want to assure our customers and partners that this was a technical issue and we have ruled out a cybersecurity incident as the root cause. Our network teams are conducting a full review to ensure that this situation doesn’t happen again. We apologize for the inconvenience caused and thank customers for their patience.”

Notably, Bell said an update it made to its routers caused the outage and that it ruled out a cybersecurity incident as the root cause. The company’s network teams are conducting a full review.

The issue began around 9 a.m. ET and impacted Canadians across providers and provinces. Bell previously confirmed the outage was impacting customers in Ontario and Quebec. However, reports from people in other provinces and outage sites like Downdetector indicated problems were spread across several provinces.

Multiple providers were impacted as well. Telus, which recently launched fibre home internet in Ontario and Quebec running on Bell’s lines, also had an outage. In an email to MobileSyrup, a Telus spokesperson laid the blame on Bell:

“Due to a Bell network disruption, some Telus customers in Eastern and Atlantic Canada experienced an internet and wireless outage this morning beginning around 9:30 a.m. ET. Services have been fully restored since 11 a.m. ET. Any customers who continue to experience connectivity issues are advised to reboot their devices.”

Anyone still experiencing issues with their Bell or Telus service should try restarting their devices. If that doesn’t work, it might be worth trying to get in contact with your provider.