Philippe Morin
Northern News Services
Published Monday, September 17, 2007

INUVIK - People of the Mackenzie Delta awoke to some inconvenience on Sept. 14, discovering their Internet and long-distance service wasn't working.

The six-hour interruption started around 5 a.m. and prevented all long-distance calls to and from Tsiieghtchic, Fort McPherson, Inuvik, Aklavik and Tuktoyaktuk.

Local and cell-phone service were still working and emergency services suffered no interruption because of their backup networks.

Anne Kennedy, director of corporate communications for Northwestel, said the pause was caused by a faulty diesel generator at the Vittrekwa river microwave transmission tower outside Fort McPherson.

She said Internet and long-distance telephone signals travel down the Dempster Highway by relay towers, and one tower suffered a failure.

"All long-distance communications in the Mackenzie delta are fed through our system of microwave towers," Kennedy explained.

"It works on a relay system and the towers all have their own power source. We had a power failure at one of the sites," she said.

Kennedy added that repair workers travelled by car from Inuvik and McPherson to reach the tower.

Normal protocol would have been to fly, but takeoff was prevented by fog.

As of press time on Sept. 14, she added more shortages were possible in the near future, until the system was fully repaired.

"From memory, I would say this was the worst communications failure in the past five years," she added.