INUVIK - A broken microwave tower was to blame for repeated high-speed Internet and Interac outages in Inuvik last week, according to NorthwesTel.

The damage occurred on the morning of Monday, April 12, while Northwestel, the town's only high-speed Internet provider, was in the midst of upgrading its service to the Mackenzie Delta Region.

Web users weren't the only ones affected by the intermittent high-speed Internet service last week. Businesses with Interac systems relying on the connection had to deal with plenty of frustrated customers. Cliff Stringer, NorthMart store manager, above, was one of them. - Andrew Rankin/NNSL photo

"We're in the process of transferring Inuvik to a new service and during that transfer there was an error somewhere on the microwave system on the Dempster Highway," said Northwestel spokeswoman Sunny Patch.

She said a repair crew sent to the Yukon site ended up having to revert to the original system on Friday. Engineers for the company are still trying to pinpoint what went wrong. In the meantime, Patch said residents won't have to worry about Internet outages.

Jeff Sutton, Aurora College's computer analyst, said some classes at the school which needed access to the Web were disrupted throughout the week, but none were cancelled.

"It's was a pain." he said. "But from time to time we do have outages. It's the nature of technology."

Dial-up and Blackberry users weren't affected by the blackouts.

The outages also caused headaches for some business owners with Interac machines. While some of the smaller businesses offer the service using the slower dial-up system, bigger businesses in town rely on the high-speed connection to deal with debit or credit card transactions more quickly.

NorthMart is one of the latter businesses. Store manager Cliff Stringer said on many occasions throughout the week Interac customers attempted to pay two or three times before being successful.

He said the store encountered most delays during afternoons.

"It's been quite a problem, especially the last two weeks or so," he said. "We had a few upset people, but I know most understood."

The store has a dial-up back-up system but it can be used only by one cashier at a time. After contacting Northwestel throughout the week, he was assured crews were working to solve the problem.