Cellphone outage?

Two days ago most cellphone carriers in the USA had a simultaneous major outage. Starting at 2pm yesterday most cellphone carriers in Canada also had a major outage. It’s now 4am and my Bell cellphone still does not receive calls.

Im curious if the folks here have a considered opinion of what kind of “event” would cause such an outage across so many carriers in both the USA and Canada??

Oops sorry posted a link re an issue but that is mostly BC but I see you said all of Canada. No idea.

Ahhh… not necessarily all of Canada, but certainly BC and Ontario. Downdector.ca is showing that the problem is now mostly limited to Bell and Virgin, and less so Telus. Rogers appeared to fix the problem by late yesterday afternoon. (I am with Bell and no-one has been able to call me for 24 hrs).

The problem appears to be that customers cannot receive calls, but generally can make calls, and data/text generally also seem to work… which is probably why there is not a bigger stink about this :slight_smile:

With a major outage in the US followed by Canada, I am wondering what common factor could be the cause as the carriers are saying nothing?!

I quick googled and there are a couple of major landslides due to rain that took out fiber I seem to recall. And since it’s for major providers the cascade down effect was impacting others.

Yeah, found this one:

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It’s possible that multiple (shared) backhauls have been hit and possibly partitioned a few cells areas.

It’s possible that this is because some telco traffic is only “routed” by hardware controlled wavelengths, while IP networks generally have a better ways to correct/heal themselves.

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Thank you Janet and Tylsl. CBC is now also reporting the problem, saying a “significant” fibre cable between Vancouver and Calgary was cut. Dismay, frustration during weekend of phone-service disruption across B.C. | CBC News

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