Bell outage leaves some Ontario, Quebec customers without internet, cell service

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A widespread internet and mobile outage has left some Bell customers without service on Wednesday morning.

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Bell Canada confirmed on social media shortly before 10 a.m. that some customers across Ontario and Quebec may be experiencing an internet service disruption. It said around 11:30 that the outage was also affecting mobile service.

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The company said it is working to fix the issue as quickly as possible. Some customers reported that their service was working again throughout the morning, however Bell has not yet said that it has restored full service for all.

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“Our network team is investigating and we’ll provide updates as soon as they’re available,” said spokeswoman Tianna Goguen in an emailed statement.

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Goguen said customers can find real-time updates by checking the ↕Bell_Support account on X.

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She did not immediately confirm the total number of customers affected by the disruption.

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According to Down Detector, a website that tracks outages, thousands of Bell customers started reporting issues just before 9:20 a.m.

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In 2023, the CRTC directed all service providers to notify the regulator within two hours of when they become aware of a major outage.

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That order was among a handful of interim measures the commission implemented as it launched a consultation with the aim of developing rules to improve network reliability and resiliency.

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At the time, it also ordered carriers that have experienced a major outage to submit a report within two weeks outlining the cause of the disruption, steps taken to resolve it, how emergency and accessibility services were affected, and plans put in place to prevent a reoccurrence.

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The CRTC cited the July 2022 Rogers outage — when millions of customers were in the dark for up to 15 hours — as one of the events prompting its consultation into how providers must report and notify customers when their services go down.

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For its part, Rogers has sought to strengthen the resiliency of its networks since the outage, which was caused by a configuration error during a network upgrade, according to a report by Xona Partners Inc. delivered to the CRTC last year.

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The company said it completed a full review of its networks and implemented all recommendations contained in the independent report.

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About a month after the Rogers outage, Canada’s major telecom companies reached a formal agreement to “ensure and guarantee” mobile roaming and other mutual assistance in the case of a future major outage.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 21, 2025.

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Companies in this story: (TSX:BCE)

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