Approximately 15,000 Bell Canada customers in Orleans were left without phone service this weekend for more than 24 hours. Most homes and businesses in the 613 area code with the local telephone prefixes 590, 824, 830, 837, and 841 were without service during the outage.

A contractor installing utility poles around 3519 Innes road accidentally damaged a main Bell Canada trunk line around 4:30pm on Saturday November 13. Bell Canada brought many workers and nine trucks to the scene in an effort to repair the lines. Some affected customers had their service restored as early as Sunday night, but some customers weren't expected to have service until at least 10pm on Monday.

Many customers were upset that they were not able to get an accurate report from Bell Canada as to why the outage occurred. Bell Canada's automated voice recognition system, "Emily," could not understand callers' requests for help. Customers were directed to call 611 for repair related issues.