Bell Aliant investigates phone failure

Bell Aliant is continuing to investigate how its phone service andbackup system were all down in New Brunswick for several hours on Thursday.

Many New Brunswickers started complaining mid-morning on Thursdaythat cell phones, landlines and internet phones were only working sporadically.

The phones went out when a fibre optic cable was cut in the northern city of Campbellton.

The phone problems were compounded when Bell Aliant's backup system wasn't working properly.

At the height of the outage, it is estimated that one-third of New Brunswickers were affected by the phone outage.

Sarah Levy, a Bell Aliant spokeswoman, said the phone company is investigating the factors that led to the widespread phone problems.

"We're now investigating... what was the issue with our backup system, why it wasn't fully functioning the way it should have been," Levy said.

The company said it will fix the problems with its backup system as soon as possible.

Phone failure creates headaches

Even though the phone problems were fixed by early Thursday afternoon, the loss of service caused headaches for many people across the province.

Trudy Boutlier, who is working on theDonald Trump event in Saint John next week, said the loss of phone service caused unnecessary delays for a group that is working on a tight deadline.

"We have a lot of work to do, lots of phone calls, emails, calling people, and it disrupted the day a little bit," she said.

In some cases, the trouble also extended to Interac and credit card transactions for businesses.

Belinda Balemans, the co-owner of Balemans Produce at the Saint John City Market, said 50 per cent of her customers use Interac or Visa.

"It's taking a chunk out of our daily profits today," Balemans said on Thursday.

Bernard Cormier, the cultural affairs officer in Saint John, said he was expecting many calls throughout the day so the outage was an inconvenience for him.

"So what I had to do is turn around and send them an email and ask them to send the information by email which is difficult when there is a lot of information that has to be sent," he said.

During the middle of the phone outage, Saint John started placing its emergency vehicles, such as police, fire and ambulances, in strategic places around the city. Theidea was that if someone could not call 911,they would be able to find an emergency vehicledeployed around the city.