Lisa Scott
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (July 15/05) - Equipment failure cut off telephone service to 500 NorthwesTel customers for 16 hours this week.

Phone lines throughout Range Lake North went down at 10 p.m. Tuesday after computer hardware at the phone company's main exchange station failed, said Anne Kennedy, director of public affairs for NorthwesTel.

"It's very rare that we have this type of equipment failure."

The breakdown was so bad technicians had to call the equipment manufacturer to get directions on how to get the lines up and running again.

The lines, which included all phone booths in the area, were back in service the next day at 3:45 p.m.

The company received 190 trouble calls from customers to alert them to the phone outage.

Kennedy said it is NorthwesTel policy to alert emergency services of such a widespread problem, although a spokesperson for the Yellowknife Fire Department said it didn't know phone lines were down.

"If phones were down for 16 hours in homes, we'd have a concern with that," said Darcy Hernblad, deputy fire chief.

The department's dispatch controls fire and ambulance responses.

The communication breakdown troubled Hernblad, who said the department contacted NorthwesTel.

The RCMP and hospital were unable to confirm if they'd been alerted or not.