OpenMedia Calls for Federal Investigation into Bell/Telus Internet Outage

After today’s internet network outage from Bell and Telus that affected customers in eastern Ontario and Quebec, consumer advocacy group OpenMedia is demanding accountability for the downtime.

“What happened today, and how can we know it won’t happen again? We need clear truthful answers and we aren’t going to get them if the government doesn’t step in,” said OpenMedia Campaigns Director Matt Hatfield, in a statement.

“Just this morning, Bell CEO Mirko Bibic was telling his shareholders Bell runs Canada’s most reliable networks. And yet a few hours later, we saw his network serving our two largest provinces fail catastrophically, kicking millions of Canadians offline for an extended period during critical work, medical emergencies, and much more,” added Hatfield.

OpenMedia says reliable internet is more important than ever before, especially during COVID-19, when it’s being used for work, school and more by millions of Canadians, and wants to ensure a widespread outage does not happen again.