GUYSBOROUGH – Once again Bell Aliant has failed to provide Internet service to customers in the Guysborough area and the company has provided few answers, when questioned, about the lack of service.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona, Bell Aliant customers were again left in the digital darkness with no Internet service from Sept. 24 to 30. This while customers supplied by other Internet service providers were back online, in most cases, by end of day Sept. 24.
The storm impact follows a three-day Internet outage from Aug. 29 to 31, impacting Bell Aliant customers – businesses and individuals – as reported in this newspaper. At that time, Guysborough-area businesses told The Journal that the failure of Internet service had caused severe difficulties in day-to-day operations and decreased sales.
While much of Guysborough County was spared any severe impact due to Hurricane Fiona, and had power restored long before many other areas of the province, the Internet outage was more than an inconvenience to businesses who were trying to provide service to the public following the storm.
In the days directly after Hurricane Fiona, gasoline for generators was in high demand and Cook’s Gas Bar & Robins in Guysborough was one of the few stations in the eastern end of the province that had both the power and gas to meet that need. The only problem was that they had no Internet and were forced to run on a cash-only basis.
Business owner Fraser Cook told The Journal on Sept. 30 that Bell Aliant had given him no information when he called to report the outage and request tech support. He said, “Again, we’re being left in the dark on the matter.
“I have customers coming in that live five miles away and they have service, they have Bell Internet. There’re quite a few communities around us that have it, but I do know of four businesses in my immediate area that are Bell customers that don’t have Internet and are struggling,” said Cook.
And processing payment is not the only challenge businesses are facing; ordering supplies is also impacted.
“One of them [orders] I had to do manually, which if I had the computer would be a 10-to-15-minute ordeal; manually you’re going into your files and getting numbers and codes. Sixty-four items, for instance with nine-digit numbers; it’s a slow process,” added Cook.
“I want to stress that we understand what the rest of the province is going through, I can appreciate that. We got through the storm literally unscathed, and I am very thankful for that and we’re doing our best to continue on…I have customers coming in and saying, ‘You still don’t have Internet?’ And that’s troubling to me,” Cook said.
At Home Hardware in West Cooks Cove, staff said customers would often shop and then make a trip to the bank in the village of Guysborough, returning to make their purchase.
For a business selling essential goods for repairing any damage that Hurricane Fiona had caused, the lack of Internet was very inconvenient. For some customers, the temporary cash-only policy meant leaving goods on the counter.
Home Hardware is in a similar situation to Cook’s Gas Bar, when it comes to incoming and outgoing product orders.
“Our weekly orders, we got our order in this week and we couldn’t download anything to process the order,” said Peggy Procure, floor manager at Home Hardware. “I might have to take the computer system home and try to do it from home. I have Seaside at home. Seaside is working. Eastlink is working. Why isn’t Bell…For businesses you rely on Internet; you need it. I think businesses are probably going to start looking elsewhere for an Internet provider if Bell can’t do anything.”
Next door to Home Hardware, Hendsbee Auto Repair was also without Internet and couldn’t accept anything other than cash payment nor print bills for customers.
Friday (Sept. 30) afternoon at approximately 3:30, the long wait was over and Bell Aliant Internet service was restored. Throughout the week, The Journal had been in frequent contact with a media spokesperson for Bell Aliant about the ongoing Internet outage and requested, on several occasions, an explanation specific to the situation in Guysborough, for the lack of service and asked if clients would be compensated for the loss of service.
On Monday (Oct. 3) the media representative directed The Journal to a website that gave an overview of Bell Aliant’s Hurricane Fiona recovery plan. No further information or explanation was provided.
