Massive Bell Canada Outage Disrupts Service Across Ontario and Quebec

Did you experience an outage this morning? Here's why!

On the morning of May 21, 2025, Bell Canada experienced a widespread service outage that left tens of thousands of customers without internet and mobile connectivity. Beginning around 9 a.m. Eastern Time, the outage quickly escalated, with more than 130,000 users reporting issues on Downdetector, a website that tracks real-time service disruptions.

The outage primarily affected landline internet services, which accounted for approximately 61% of the reports. Mobile internet disruptions made up another 11%, while 28% of users faced a complete service blackout. Major urban centers such as Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and Halifax were among the hardest hit.

Bell Canada later confirmed that the disruption stemmed from a routine software update that unexpectedly impacted some of the company's routers. In response, Bell rolled back the update, and by around 11 a.m. ET, the company announced that most services had been fully restored.

“We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate our customers’ patience,” Bell said in a public statement. The company has advised users still experiencing issues to reboot their modems by unplugging them, waiting a few minutes, and plugging them back in.

While the technical issue was resolved relatively quickly, the incident raised broader concerns about the resilience of Canada’s telecommunications infrastructure. With a small number of providers controlling most of the country’s internet and mobile networks, outages like this can have an outsized impact on millions of Canadians.

As life and work become increasingly dependent on reliable connectivity, events like today’s Bell Canada outage highlight the importance of robust systems, transparent communication, and strong contingency planning to maintain trust and ensure continuity of service.

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