Internet woes for CityWest customers

Internet and data communications to Prince Rupert have been affected by severed fibre optic lines due to a rock slide. The incident occurred on Feb. 1 around 1 p.m. in North Bend, just west of Kelowna, and affects several communication companies, including CityWest.

CitiWest doesn’t know when the internet issue affecting P.R. residents will be repaired. Some users will be experiencing a slow down of internet services and others will have no internet at all.

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Cleanup efforts of the rock debris are ongoing and enough rubble has now been cleared to enable technicians to assess the damages. Damages are reported to be more extensive than originally thought as several line breaks have been found. Access to the lines is challenging due to the remoteness of the area. Repair work will commence once all of the rubble has been cleared away, CityWest said.

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Most of the internet traffic to the city went through one of the severed fibre lines to Vancouver. CityWest has re-routed the network traffic through Prince George to Calgary to Prince Rupert so some service can be utilized by customers. In doing so, there will be slow downs in service because the bandwidth on the alternate route does not have the same capacity as the Vancouver route. There is more usage going through a smaller circuit, CityWest said.

“We have had a few calls. In the most part customer are understanding. All of our customers are experiencing a slow down, ” Chris Armstrong, director of marketing said. “As soon as there are updates, we will share. We recommend customers to keep track of our Facebook page as that’s where we have our most current information.”