A 102-year-old man in Toronto’s Swansea neighbourhood spent hours on his stoop after his Bell landline died, the Toronto Star reported.
His daughter, Annie Pejovich Chant, asked the Star not to name him, citing telemarketing scams. That line is how he reaches the world and how a medical-alert device that plugs into a phone jack talks to a 24-hour station, so when it died he waited in the dark until a passerby with a cellphone got her on the phone.
Bell says this was not the company pulling the plug. Elise Von Scheel told the Star the outage was “an isolated equipment issue” from a faulty aging copper connector. Crews repaired that connector and restored service, putting him back on the working copper plant. His street does lose copper this fall, she said, but this night was a failed part, not a proactive decommission or a spite unplug.
The larger clock is still on the calendar. Bell had mailed Swansea, including a warning he got August 4, saying home phone service shuts down November 4, 2026 unless customers move to fibre, which the letter also ties to keeping 911. Last Friday he got a second disconnect notice while still paying $70 a month, which is why the November 4 fibre and 911 letter still matters even after this outage was fixed.
Fibre phones need a powered modem, so they go dark in a blackout unless you buy the battery pack Bell sells for $299.99 with up to nine hours. Pejovich Chant said a technician told her a copper backup would only be looked into while a UPS would be case-by-case.
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) commissioner Bram Abramson has written that copper decommissioning has gone ahead without active regulatory oversight. Connect America, parent of Lifeline Canada, told the Star it has not received coordinated copper-shutdown notices from telcos. Nearly 40 per cent of its Canadian medical-alert customers still use devices that plug into a phone jack on a traditional copper landline, so a quiet decommission can cut more than a voice call if the industry is not told in advance.
That sits next to a week when the CRTC was still arguing junk fees with Bell, after a truck cut Bell fibre and 911 in Labrador and copper thefts knocking out 911.
Update Sept. 1, 2026: Bell senior media relations manager Elise Von Scheel emailed after the story ran with context she says went to other outlets but did not make the original Star writeup. The outage, she says, was a water-damaged copper connector in an aging terminal near the customer’s home, which is part of why Bell is moving off copper: the plant is aging, copper prices are up, replacement gear is scarce, and theft is stretching outages. Fibre, Bell says, is more robust and sees fewer long outages. The company started the copper-to-fibre shift in 2022 and will keep going neighbourhood by neighbourhood for years, with at least two months’ notice and an effort to work with customers. For 911 in a blackout, Bell now points people to a battery backup that starts around $80 at electronics stores, plus its Always On option.
Want to see more of our stories on Google?
P.S. Want to keep this site truly independent? Support us by buying us a beer, treating us to a coffee, or shopping through Amazon here. Links in this post are affiliate links, so we earn a tiny commission at no charge to you. Thanks for supporting independent Canadian media!
It makes sense that they want to get off copper. It’s duplicate infastructure that is less capable than fibre and has a rampant theft problem. We get frequent outages in my area that are just copper theft, though the fibre lines also get cut by people trying to steal copper.