Commerce as well as personal communication slowed -- and in some places halted -- in Sundre on Sept. 20 due to a Telus disruption in Internet service.
According to Telus, up to 2,400 home Internet customers in Sundre, Carstairs, Crossfield and Three Hills were impacted when a cable was damaged by a third party at an undisclosed location on that Thursday morning. There were no estimates given as to how many business account customers were affected.
Internet service disruption began around 9:30 a.m. in some places.
“We are working to restore services as quickly as possible and anticipate restoration by mid-evening,” Telus updated customers around 12:48 p.m. that day. A later communication said the outage ended at 7 p.m. "Technicians have spliced cables and restored services."
That was too late for Backwoods Bakery and Cafe which had no functioning debit card machine throughout the day for customers to pay for their meals because of the outage.
“It hurts the business’s profit because when people come in and realize we don’t have debit and they don’t have cash, they leave,” said Tanner Grunau, an employee of the Centre St. N. business.
“Nobody carries cash anymore,” Grunau added.
Many businesses in the town were on a cash-only transaction basis on and off throughout the day.
But access to cash for those looking for it from at least one financial institution was also limited.
Staff at the town's Mountain View Credit Union branch said ATM and teller services were limited because of the outage.
The financial institution was locking up an hour and a half before its regular 4:30 p.m. closing because of the disruption.
Some businesses’ Internet connections are backed up, largely through a dial-up or DS service, enabling them to process transactions through their debit machine.
In the early afternoon, staff at a downtown retail business said they were processing debit transactions, albeit much slower than on uninterrupted service days, through a backup service.
People in Sundre also had issues sending personal communications through cellphones as well as desktop and laptop computers,
Sundre Municipal Library’s Facebook account advertised a reprieve.
“Missing your internet? Come to the Library! We are not affected by the current outage,” read the mid-afternoon post.
Not all Internet users in the town were impacted though.
Sundre’s Integra Tire Auto Centre had no disruption to service, said owner-operator Connie Anderson.
