Telus restores wireless service after calling outage in Eastern Canada

Telus customers in Ontario and Quebec ran into wireless calling problems on the morning of Nov. 5. Telus says the issue has been fixed. A spokesperson said a “small number of calls in Eastern Canada may have experienced interruptions,” that all services have been restored, and that customers in Western Canada were not affected.

Reports began around 9 a.m. ET. Customers on X described trouble in Toronto, Scarborough, Ajax, Stouffville, Peterborough and Durham Region. Some said they could not make outgoing calls or reach customer support. Others said calls to numbers outside the Telus network would not connect, or that Wi-Fi calling failed. Outage tracker Downdetector showed a spike in reports shortly before 9 a.m. ET, and MobileSyrup writers confirmed sporadic phone and voicemail problems. Telus Support told customers its engineers were working on a fix but gave no restoration time at first.

In Windsor, police warned that Telus customers might have trouble reaching the non-emergency line. Windsor Fire and Rescue Services issued a similar notice but said its 911 line was working. Telus’s outage page had listed wireless problems around Maidstone and Tecumseh, Ont., with some entries saying “911 may be affected.” Telus says that wording referred to a different, smaller disruption, not the calling outage. It says no 911 disruptions for its Ontario customers were tied to the incident. Its 911 fallback uses other carriers’ networks in the area, and customers may need to set their phone’s network selection to automatic for it to work.

The Maidstone and Tecumseh disruption, which began at 9:39 a.m., was still listed as ongoing at the time of MobileSyrup’s afternoon update. Telus’s outage page also shows many long-running local outages in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and B.C., affecting wireless, home phone, internet and TV. In Vancouver and Whistler, a wireless degradation hitting data, text and voice began Nov. 4, and the cause had not been determined. Telus has not said what caused Thursday’s calling problems. Earlier this year, an August outage in northern B.C. was caused by cable theft, and a May incident disrupted 911 and cellular service.