Phone, internet services back up after Telesat satellite issue in Northern Canada

Phone and internet services have been restored in all satellite-servednorthern communitiesafter problems with a Telesat satellite disruptedcommunications in a wide swath of northern Quebec and Nunavut on Sunday afternoon.

After about 19 hours, debit and credit services in much of Nunavut arefinally back online, as is RCMP dispatch.

"There was a major inconvenience for our customers,but thank god in the last 10minutes things are up and running and we're ready to go," said Jim Jones, manager of Arctic Ventures Marketplace in Iqaluit.

The Telesat Anik F2 satellite cut out around5 p.m. ET Sunday. That knocked out internetin most ofNunavut aswell as in seven communities in the N.W.T. and Old Crow in Yukon.

A 'technical anomaly'

In a statement, Northwestelsaidthe satellite, whichhelps provide cellphone and internet service to communities across the North, experienced a "technical anomaly" that resulted in loss of services.

The outage would also have impactedATMs and aircraft in some communities, saidJohnFlaherty, vice-presidentof marketing forTelesat, early Monday morning.

Thesatellite provides service to providers such as Northwestel, SSi Micro,Shaw Direct,Xplornet,Bell Mobility andU.S. satellite internet provider Wildblue.

Internet in mostof the 25 Nunavutcommunities serviced by SSiMicro'sQiniqnetwork went down, the company said in a news release Monday. Qiniqcustomers in Iqaluit, Cambridge Bayand Rankin Inletwere not affected, the company said.

"These three communities have accessto service from two satellites, Anik F2 and Anik F3, providing customers a redundant 'backup'link andadditional capacity," said the release.

That created some confusing situations, for example, people in Iqaluitcould make calls between cellphones,and fromlandline to landline,but not from a cellphone to alandline.

That left theterritoryrelying on backup satellite phones to keep in touch with hamlets.

Cause still under investigation

Shaw Directsaidin a tweet early Monday the outage wascreating a signal issue for its French stations and HD channels.

It said"the affected satellite performed emergency movements for reasons that are currently under investigation." Shaw estimates service will be restored at11:30 a.m.ET.

A problem with the same satellite in 2011 grounded flights across the North and affected internet, cellphone and bank machine services.

Flaherty said this is "definitely not" the same problem as 2011.

"We still haven't ascertained what caused the issue.We have a working theory, but at this point it would bespeculation.It's too early to say."

On Monday morning, Flahertysaid the companywas on track to have all service restored by noon.

Customers affected by the service interruption tweeted out their displeasure with the situation.