{"id":169261,"date":"2025-09-26T00:50:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T00:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/169261\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T00:50:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T00:50:11","slug":"4-day-phone-and-internet-outage-resolved-in-tuktoyaktuk-n-w-t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/169261\/","title":{"rendered":"4-day phone and internet outage resolved in Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T."},"content":{"rendered":"

Power and internet services have been restored to residents in Tuktokyaktuk, N.W.T., after a service disruption that spanned across four days.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Catherine Newsome, Northwestel’s marketing director, told CBC News “a local equipment issue” was behind the service disruption. She said\u00a0the company became aware\u00a0of the service disruption Sunday morning, which took until Wednesday to be resolved.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It was a complex situation that took several days to resolve. We remained in contact with local leadership and authorities and greatly appreciate their patience and collaboration,” she wrote in an email.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The disruptions also affected 911 services.\u00a0In a Facebook post on Monday, the RCMP\u00a0asked people who needed police services\u00a0to show up to the local detachment if their calls weren’t going through.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Media relations officer Josh Seaward said there were no reports of any incidents throughout the outage that police were not aware about.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CBC\u00a0has reached out to\u00a0the Inuvialuit Development Corporation, Annie Steen, and\u00a0Tuktoyaktuk mayor, Erwin Elia. They both declined to comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One business ‘dead in the water’\u00a0<\/p>\n

James Keevik owns and operates Keevik Enterprises. He gets tourists from across the globe who come to him for boat and fishing tours. He estimates the lack of cell service during that period have costed him about $5,000 in lost tours.<\/p>\n

“I had no tours or whatsoever,” he said. “Dead in the water.”<\/p>\n

\"manJames Keevik is a tourism operator in Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T. (Kate Kyle\/CBC)<\/p>\n

Normally at this time of the year, he said his phone would be buzzing\u00a0from morning to noon from people trying to book tours.<\/p>\n

“You’re watching as the days go by and you know the ice is coming and then your tours are gonna have to shut down for the winter,” he said.<\/p>\n

Keevik said he has internet from Starlink,\u00a0but that doesn’t mean tourists could call his phone.<\/p>\n

“The tourists call first. They make reservations to make sure I’m available,” he said.<\/p>\n

“They do not just drop in like you can do [with] a haircut. That is not the way it works with tourists.”<\/p>\n

\"ANorthwestel said a fibre line between Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk is expected to be complete in the coming days. (John Last\/CBC)Upgrades to Northwestel services coming<\/p>\n

Newsome said\u00a0the government of Northwest Territories fibre line from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk is expected to be completed in the coming days.<\/p>\n

In July 2023, the federal government announced it was investing $14,803,500 in the Mackenzie Valley Fibre Link project expansion, while the N.W.T. would provide $4,934,500.<\/p>\n

Once the installation\u00a0is\u00a0complete, Newsome said Northwestel will be able to upgrade how its services are provided to each community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The community’s connectivity services are currently powered by an aging microwave system, and once the fibre line is fully commissioned, Northwestel services will be powered by full fibre-to-the-home technology \u2013 this is our best network technology available,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Power and internet services have been restored to residents in Tuktokyaktuk, N.W.T., after a service disruption that spanned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[64,63,237,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-169261","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-internet","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}