Widespread Internet Outage Affected Thousands Across Ontario

| Small Town News | A Division of Small Town Productions |

Thousands of residents across Ontario experienced a widespread internet outage today after a severed Cogeco fibre optic line lead disrupted service across a large portion of the province.

While Cogeco customers were among the hardest hit, the outage also affected customers of several internet providers that rely on the same wholesale infrastructure, including Nexicom, TekSavvy, Oxio, Coextro, MEXICOM, Netfox, Carry Telecom, and VMedia.

Many customers experienced a complete loss of internet service, while others reported intermittent connectivity.

According to telecommunications providers, the outage was caused by a severed fibre-optic line along a major backbone route. Because many independent internet providers lease network capacity, the damage resulted in service disruptions well beyond Cogeco's own customer base.

As of publication, no additional details had been released regarding the exact location of the fibre cut or what caused the line to be severed.

Service has been mostly restored as repair crews worked to restore the damaged fibre. Customers who continued experiencing issues were encouraged to restart their networking equipment and contact their internet service provider if problems persisted.

Small Town News will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates as additional information becomes available.