Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Information highway breakdown

Internet disruption, communication black out infuriates Whistler businesses
1351telus
Three linemen were lowered by helicopter to the top of a 66 m. hydro tower near Culliton Bridge 20 km north of Squamish to repair Telus' severed fiber optic line. The downed line had disrupted Internet service to over 3,000 Whistler businesses and residents for five days. Photo by Joern Rohde, Insight-Photography.com

By Vivian Moreau

In the wake of a five-day Internet disruption that left more than 3,000 Whistler businesses and residents without service and wondering what was going on, Telus says it is revising its communications policies.

Whistler businesses were left scrambling after a Dec. 14 storm downed a Telus fibre optic line about 20 km north of Squamish, cutting off high-speed Internet service to Whistler and Pemberton. Businesses were left without ability to send or retrieve e-mails or process credit or debit card transactions in the busy week leading up to Christmas. As businesses struggled to keep their doors open many were frustrated with a lack of information from Telus’s customer service and technical support staff.

“It’s not that accidents don’t happen, but there’s been absolutely no communication from Telus,” said Charlie Hastie, owner of Whistler Dream Accommodations. The property management firm had been unable to receive e-mails from potential visitors inquiring about coming to stay in Whistler over the holidays.

“People have been e-mailing us saying ‘I’d like to book this restaurant, this ski lesson’ and as far as they’re concerned we’re just ignoring them,” Hastie said. “So they’re going ‘Whistler dream? This is a Whistler nightmare.’”

Many Whistler business owners echoed Hastie’s concerns, demanding to know why Telus did not have regular radio announcements updating businesses and residents about the outage. Telus says news releases were sent to Whistler media outlets at 10 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 15 explaining the cause and extent of the disruption and indicating it could take three days for service to be restored. Text messages were also sent to Whistler cell phone customers.

Telus’s regional service head said the telecommunications company is paying close attention to Whistler’s concerns and will be considering customer suggestions in a communications rethink.

“I will definitely be taking their feedback and incorporating that into new ways of doing business. Absolutely,” said Maureen Daschuk, Telus’s general manager of customer solutions delivery, from their Burnaby offices.

Internet service was restored about 4 p.m. Tuesday at the site of the downed cable beside Highway 99 and the Culliton Creek bridge after crews spliced together the severed fibre optic line. The complex six-hour repair involved lowering three-person line crews from a helicopter to the tops of three 66-metre hydro towers in order to drop one end of the sliced cable to the ground, where ground crews then joined the cable back together. The fibre optic line, which carries three Telus Internet lines as well as Shaw Cable services, will be raised once winter storms have ceased and crews have had a chance to recover from weeks of clean-up.

Telus spokeperson Shawn Hall says the complicated repair that involved coordinating BC Hydro, Ministry of Transportation and Telus crews was challenging but went smoothly.

“There was a nice window of open weather this morning about 10 a.m. and they managed to get the helicopter in there and lift the cable off three towers,” Hall said on Tuesday.

Dial up Internet service and regular telephone service was unaffected by the downed cable. Long-distance service was transferred to an older radio transmitted service. High-speed Internet service to the Resort Municipality of Whistler, the Telus Conference Centre and Whistler-Blackcomb that also runs through the radio system was similarly unaffected.

During the outage Tourism Whistler set up six computer stations in the lobby of the Telus Conference Centre with free access for businesses.

Hub Internet Café in Creekside said business was reduced 50 per cent after it lost its Telus Internet connection. Co-owner Neil Taylor said the store, which sells bus passes and provides fax, photocopying and photo processing services, had to shut down its 26 Internet stations and was “giving out refunds left, right and centre” to visitors who had bought Internet time.

Prior Snowboards, a high-end ski and snowboard manufacturer in Function Junction, normally receives about 500 e-mails a day inquiring about purchasing products online. Downloading company e-mails from a neighbouring business on Monday, owner Dean Thompson said there should have been better communication from Telus about the service disruption.

“It would have been nice to know early Friday that it was going to be as long as it has because we’re scrambling now.”

Rogers’ Chocolates uses Shaw Cable for high-speed debit and credit card transactions. Manager Leslee Wake had to use a manual credit card imprinter to process sales during the outage, resulting in longer than usual line-ups for the Village Stroll chocolate shop. Wake said customers were understanding.

“They haven’t been complaining,” she said Monday afternoon, “but it’s problematic for us, a lot of extra work.”

Bearfoot Bistro owner Andre St. Jacques said lack of Internet was more than inconvenient for his restaurant that receives 150 e-mail inquiries a day.

“My biggest frustration is we call (Telus) and then they make you wait an hour to let you know that it’s going to be ready by Tuesday night,” he said Monday afternoon. “From a public relations perspective it was poorly orchestrated. They didn’t do a good job of letting people know when everything was going to happen.”

Telus spokespersons said the company intends to build a second back-up network from Vancouver to Whistler to prevent a similar disruption and will work toward improved and better communications.

“We understand this has been a challenge for Whistler businesses and we apologize for that,” said Telus’s Hall. “We did everything we could to get the service restored as quickly as possible in some really challenging conditions. This really was an unprecedented kind of outage for us. We’re sorry.”