SUNDRE – The nearly two-day long internet outage on Xplore’s fibre optic high-speed network serving the community was reportedly the result of a cut line.
Sundre residents and businesses who use the internet service provider were left scrambling when their connection was abruptly interrupted late on the morning of Wednesday, Oct. 2.
Some people even found themselves leaning on the Sundre Municipal Library, which is connected through the Alberta Super Net and was not affected, to access the public facility’s Wi-Fi network not only to use the internet but even for simple tasks such as printing documents, which becomes impossible on printers that rely on communicating wirelessly with a computer on a home network.
“The outage was due to a fibre cut,” Indrani Ray, director of communications with Xplore, later told the Albertan on Oct. 10 by email in response to follow-up questions.
“Unfortunately, fibre cuts can lead to prolonged outages in some situations, particularly when third parties are required to help enable repair work, which was the case in this situation,” said Ray.
“The fibre cut impacted customers in the Sundre area only,” he said.
“The fibre cut occurred near a busy rail line, and the third party was delayed from accessing the fault to perform repairs because safety and other regulations had be to met first.”
The service had been restored by the time people started their days on the morning of Friday, Oct. 4.
Questions regarding more specifically where the cut occurred and what all is involved in repairing such damage as opposed to for example a power or phone line were not answered.
Xplore just last year completed the roll out of a high-speed fibre optic internet network in Sundre.
Ray said the company continues to expand and upgrade its networks not only in the province but also across Canada, efforts that have in-part been facilitated after Xplore “recently secured $63 million in federal and provincial funding to connect an additional 8,800 households in rural Alberta to high-speed internet.”
Editor’s note: This article has been updated with the latest information from Xplore.
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