These landlines aren’t lifelines
Phone service disruption frustrates, worries some Marble Mountain residents
High winds on Christmas Day left thousands without power and for some Cape Breton communities this also meant no landline phone service.
Kate MacLean’s family has a home in Malagawatch, a community close to Marble Mountain in Inverness County. She said every time the power goes out residents in the area lose their Bell Aliant phone service and she is fed up with the situation.
“A Bell Aliant rep advised another person down in Marble Mountain when they sent an email to call,” she said, during a phone interview from the family’s other home in West Bay.
“It’s hard when you’re doing everything that you can … I don’t want it to be a known issue, someone have a medical emergency and something happen because of their (Bell Aliant’s) negligence, basically.”
MacLean said it has been a problem for more than six years. Both MacLean and her mother have made numerous complaints to Bell Aliant. They think the battery packs that keep phones working for up to eight hours during a power outage need replacing.
Marc Choma, a spokesperson for Bell Aliant, said the current problems with phone service in the area was caused by power surges and not issues with the battery packs.
“The techs have verified the battery packs were functioning,” he said.
According to Choma, a power surge during the power outage on Dec. 25 caused damage to circuits in the network. They were repaired by mid-day Dec. 26 but another power surge seemed to have damaged them again on Dec. 27.
Phone service has not been restored since.
“The power surge caused the damage to the network but when the power was restored, if there was still problems with
the circuits phone service would be disrupted,” he said.
“A tech has been dispatched to the area to resolve that.”
Choma was unsure if power surges are the reason why landline
service is lost during power outages over the past six years. It is also unknown if the battery packs were having problems in the past or if they had recently been replaced.
MacLean’s grandparents lived in Marble Mountain but moved to Port Hawksbury six or seven years ago because of the issues with landline service. When storms caused power outages and phones went dead, family didn’t know if they were safe.
Now MacLean worries about her parents when they are at the Malagawatch home and she is in West Bay.
“I find it really frustrating … it’s something that they (Bell Aliant) know about and it’s something serious,” MacLean said.
“We are in an area where you can’t get great Internet, you can’t get much cell service but you should be able to dial 911 no matter what.”
Whether the issue is battery packs or power surges, MacLean wants to see the problem fixed permanently.
“It’s an essential service. If you had to dial 911 you would assume that you could all the time. And if someone got hurt or had further complications because they can’t get the help they need it’s not going to be a good situation,” she said.
“It’s been ongoing for too long and I really hope someone doesn’t get hurt because of this.”