Thousands of residents in the Town of Oakville lost their full cable and internet access this morning as cable provider Cogeco is reporting wide-spread internet outages affecting several regions across the province of Ontario, including Halton.
Cogeco has not yet said what is causing the internet interruptions and its own site is having issues loading. The company did not and is not immediately responding to Oakville News' request for more information.
Just after 10:30 a.m. this morning, Tuesday, January 5, 2021, the media company tweeted that it was dealing with "an issue impacting its internet services."
Dear customers,
— Cogeco Connexion (@cogeco) January 5, 2021
Please, note that we are investigating an issue impacting our Internet services. Our technicians are working to resolve this situation as soon as possible.
We apologize for the inconveniences it may cause.
- Tristan
The current outage is affecting thousands of people in town, including:
- Students in remote learning
- Employees required to work from home in the ordered shutdown
- The few businesses open remotely, relying on stable internet for operations
Students in Ontario began online learning yesterday due to the rising cases of the coronavirus across the province. This is the second day of remote learning in Ontario.
The outage is also notably bad timing as shutdown orders remain in effect from the province and thousands of local residents are relying on the strength of their internet to digitize their lives in the ongoing shutdown.
Meanwhile, Oakville Hydro (OH) reported just after 12:00 p.m. They are also experiencing issues with their outage map and have partially disrupted service. OH attributes an outage to a possible emergency situation unrelated to Cogeco's outage.
Crews are responding to an outage related to a fire located on the South Service Road. Emergency services on scene. Our team is working as safely as possible to restore power. We will provide updates, including an estimated time of restoration for customers without power, ASAP.
— OakvilleHydro (@Oakvillehydro) January 5, 2021
More to come in this developing story.