Bell says an issue that left some residents of Dawn-Euphemia Township without use of their landline phones in recent weeks has been resolved but there were indications Friday that problems continued.
Bell officials say an issue that left some residents of Dawn-Euphemia Township without use of their landline phones in recent weeks is resolved, but the rural municipality’s mayor says that isn’t so.
Mayor Alan Broad, who raised concerns this week after the municipality and some of its residents weren’t able to get answers about the cause of the service disruption, said Friday the problems with the phones in the township’s Florence area persist.
“They said it was hunky dory,” Broad said. “It’s not hunky dory.”
Broad added he contacted the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Friday to start a complaint about the ongoing landline problems in that part of the community.
“They are moving my complaint up in their priority list and, hopefully, I will hear back from them very soon,” Broad said.
Dawn-Euphemia, a rural municipality in southeastern Lambton County about 50 kilometers from Sarnia, also has spotty cellphone services, the mayor noted.
Losing a landline can be a challenge for residents without a reliable cellphone service, particularly if they need to use 911, Broad said this week.
A spokesperson for the telephone company said Friday in an email that service for Bell customers in the township had been restored.
“An equipment problem in the Florence community had been causing intermittent landline outages for approximately 45 customers in the area,” Vanessa Damha said. “The issue has been resolved and full services have been restored.
“We apologize to our customers for the extended disruption.”
Broad said he visited the municipality’s community center in Florence Friday morning and the Bell landline phone there wasn’t working.
“It’s absolutely not fixed,” he said.
Broad, though, said he did receive a call Friday from someone he believes is “high up” at Bell, “and I’m confident that he will get back to me with what’s going on” and “what the plan is.”
“The media people” at Bell “said it’s up and running and it’s absolutely not,” Broad said.
“It’s just one of those frustrating things where the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, and that’s what happens when you get in situations with these extremely large media corporations.”
If Bell would share the addresses of the impacted customers with the municipality, the township could arrange to have someone visit those residents to ensure their well-being, Broad said.
“I’m sure there’s some of those isolated, vulnerable people that we have there that may not have a cellphone,” he said. “That’s my biggest concern.”
The Florence Branch of the Lambton County Library, which is located in the community centre, was one of the customers impacted and went without use of its Bell landline since just before Christmas.
A library manager said Friday there were still concerns with the service at the branch.
“I understand from a staff member who worked last night that the phone line worked, but that the incoming rings were unusual, and that Bell called the library to state that they were still working on it,” Darlene Coke, the county’s manager of library services said Friday in an email.
The county sent a cellphone to the branch during the disruption for staff to use, and so the public would still be able to contact staff there while the landline was out.
“We are not removing the cellphone from the location at the present time, as we don’t feel certain that the issue has been completely repaired and we may need to put it back into operation,” Coke said.