WONOWON -- The Northern Rockies Regional Municipality has announced a planned telecommunications outage tomorrow that “may affect” essential services over several hours.

NorthwesTel will be performing network maintenance on November 20, 2024, impacting internet, long-distance calling, and cellular service, including the ability to call 9-1-1

The planned maintenance will impact communities in the area of Prophet River, Blueberry, Wonowon, Upper Halfway, Pink Mountain, and Bougie Creek between 1:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. local time or 2:00 a.m., to 6:00 a.m. Yukon time.

Northern Rockies says the services “may be” unavailable over the four hour maintenance period, and there is potential for other areas to also experience network outages.  

The municipality asking residents to note RCMP, fire, hospital, and ambulance contacts should emergency lines become unavailable.

NorthwesTel is owned by Sixty North Unity, a consortium of Indigenous communities from the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut.

The company was purchased from Bell Canada earlier this year in a deal with nearly $1 billion, making it the world’s largest telecommunications company with full Indigenous ownership,