Public Mobile customers across Canada are dealing with a widespread data outage, and some say they’ve been without reliable service for days.
The Telus-owned prepaid carrier acknowledged the problem in a community forum yesterday, saying it is “aware that some of our customers have been experiencing data-related issues” and that teams are “actively investigating intermittent data issues affecting some customers.” No timeline for a fix has been provided.
In an afternoon update on May 27, Public Mobile told customers its network team is “continuing to work towards a resolution” and that it would post all new updates in the same thread as they become available.
As of today, May 28, customers are still chiming into the community thread to say they don’t have mobile data. And they are not happy about it, as you can expect.
Customers from Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, and New Brunswick are among those reporting the worst of it, with many saying the outage is affecting their ability to work, receive two-factor authentication codes, and stay in touch with family. Most affected users say their phones are either dropping to 3G speeds or losing data entirely unless connected to Wi-Fi.
Public Mobile’s suggested fix is to toggle Airplane mode on, wait 30 seconds, then turn it back off, or simply restart the device. The carrier noted these steps “will restore your connection temporarily at least” but acknowledged customers “may need to repeat them periodically” until the issue is resolved.
Many users on the forum say that’s exactly the problem: the workaround works, but only for a short while before the connection drops again.
Are you having data issues with Public Mobile? Whereabouts are you located?
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Public mobile not working in Kelowna BC right now
I’m in Toronto and my service was working as of this morning. It was out for most of the day yesterday
We have been having issues for weeks now and now we have no data 80% of the time. We live in PEI.
My daughter is with Public Mobile and has been having these issues for a few days now along with friends of hers who also have the service. We are located in Northern Ontario.
I was told if I did not use 4G I would be charged more per month so I toggled phone to 4G and then had constant problems with data ever since. It is tedious and time consuming to restart phone all the time.
That’s not a thing.
l had some issues May the 27th in Inverary, Ontario. Today, it seems to be ok.
yup. totally having issues and I know it’s completely because they are scrapping 3G 4G LTE service on June 15. so you need to find a new carrier or get a new phone. the price will increase 5$ plus tax if you keep your outdated phone.
I am furious. 5G drains your battery faster. plus I just bought a ‘new phone’ in January 2026. I can’t afford a new phone or the new increase. public mobile will be losing a lot of customers by switching to 5G.
Google says they are scrapping 3g but keeping 4g service.
5g isn’t even available outside major city’s even though all local retailers push it as a selling point even it’s invalid
My community of under 500 has 5G and it’s over an hour away from a city.
No disruptions here (Northern Alberta)
I’m in New Brunswick, no data for the past couple days.
Yup Hamilton On. AI taught me the airplane trick, works faster than the a phone restart. It seems to happen when on wifi for periods of time. If I stay on data and dont connect to wifi, it remains connected. Its something to do with the switch from wifi to mobile data
I left Public Mobile around 2 years ago and I couldn’t be happier. Stay away from any “service provider” which doesn’t have actual customer service where you can speak to someone.
I agree, there’s virtually none. Lived with it because it was cheaper. But not anymore, I’ll be switching shortly.
This.
Odd. Eastern Sask, using data to post this now
I live in central Alberta, and I’ve been having these issues for the last couple of days. I checked with my coworkers, and they’ve also been having issues. My boss is considering buying a new phone to see if that fixes it. It feels like the data won’t stay on for more than half an hour without needing a restart or toggling airplane mode.
Same issue in Vancouver bc for the last 4 days restart works OK for Awhile
I have been with public mobile for about 5 years and have never had issues like the past week. Over the past year they have aggressively started pushing other wiresless carrier deals via text and email and now this crazy outage? It really seems that they want to quit the mobile business. Promoting competitors and now and outage rivaled by no others, nation wide, coast to coast. I guess its time to switch like they literally promote me to do. Southern Nova Scotia.
Ya pretty much they want you to switch to koodo or telus so they can raise your price every 6 months.
What do you expect from these bs 25-30$ plans. You get what you paid for.
Stay away from this junk.
Telus laid off some people. They pressed some buttons to fk people up before they left.
Live in Nova Scotia, north eastern shore region. Having problems for couple days. Also just bought a new phone after their warning of price increase and not using 3g anymore. 🤞
We’re in PEI. My husband and I are both realtors, and we depend on solid data service to run our business! It has been frustrating to say the least. The airplane mode “fix” does work most of the time, but having to do it multiple times a day while trying to serve our clients is far from ideal.
Why do u cheap out and use bs public if your income is affected by cell data. Get bell or rogers.
I am in Alberta, and we had an outage for a couple of hours during the afternoon of May 26, but we’ve been OK since.
Yes, I was having issues Tuesday in Thunder Bay. If I made a phone call it drops to 3G and then stays stuck there and of course no data over 3G. I thought my APN got corrupted so reset all that and still had the same issue. I thought my phone was screwed.
I discovered that toggling to Airplane mode seemed to work, until I made another call or was in a weak area.
Thanks for not letting us know it was a network issue PM!
Vaughan area of Ontario. Very unstable data. The temporary fix doesn’t seem to regularly work.
It’s been multiple days with intermittent data. Data has been more unavailable than available.
We have three family members on PM. Two are fine with data. My phone has not had reliable data for about a week. Most of the time my phone shows no connection and very occasionally 3G.
I’m located in York region of Ontario.
Around Wingham, Ontario, we have had poor data reception for weeks. As mentioned, restarting the phone created a temporary fix.
Issues out here in Nova Scotia. On the bus saying 5G to immediately drop to no data. Constant restarts dont help as data degradation kicks in and I start to lose file integrity. Already lost 12 hrs of music from the restarts.
Had no issues here in Edmonton, all working fine,
The way I can get my data up and going again, is by changing my preferred network type to 3g only.
I’m NB, still not working
I’m in Nova Scotia mine drops for hours at a time to no internet at all or practically no internet so slow it’s basically useless. It’s down more then it’s up I had to get a 2nd sim no internet isn’t an option I’m not impressed having to buy a 2nd plan on top of the 175G I already bought. And yes I used a competitor maybe I’ll just swap permanent.
I’m in New Brunswick and my data isn’t working at all for a few days. I need to be checking my emails when I’m at work on my breaks to get messages and I can’t get them. I can’t check messages on Facebook either .
Live near St. John’s, NL and have had no internet connection, unless at home, for 5 days. This is ridiculous,
I’ve got public mobile and I’m visiting Toronto. I live in ottawa. I thought it was only just ontario but it must be all residents of Canada. I tried to restart and it worked but now it’s gone.
I’ve been with public mobile for about 15 years. I’m in Southern Quebec and have been basically without data for three days, and the restarting or switching airplane mode on and off only worked twice for me. This is definitely making me want to switch away from Public /Koodo/Telus
Switch to bell or rogers its cheap now everywhere. Fk cares about 5-10$ a month and you dont have to deal with this nonsense.
All u cheap fks using this junk. Time to move on
Bad data and cell service in Kingston,NS
I am with public mobile and I have been having issues with them for about a month now. Now in saying that I have been a client for a decade and never had one problem before this however I also have never had to deal with customer service either. That is the absolute downfall of this entire company the chatbots and the response time for customer service data can go down for one day or two but if those two fail trying to fix it there’s a problem
–saskatoon