ST. PETER’S: Cape Breton-Richmond MLA Alana Paon says ongoing landline telephone issues have become a safety concern for residents of Richmond County.
On February 13, Paon hosted a community meeting for the residents of Framboise, Fourchu and Grand River who expressed frustration over unreliable landline telephone service and the lack of cell phone coverage in their communities. The meeting was attended by approximately 50 people, including municipal officials, as well as representatives from Richmond County’s Emergency Management Office and the Cape Breton Partnership.
“I started to hear about these issues in the summer of 2017. I had been approached by a couple of the residents from Fourchu who were having issues with their landlines going down, as well as static on the lines,” said Paon.
Between 120 and 125 Richmond County residents came forward at a community meeting in August to express concern with the quality of landline telephone service. Paon says the issue is compounded by the lack of cell phone coverage in many areas.
“If a person cannot access a means of communication to be able to call out for assistance with 911, that to me is an emergency management issue,” said Paon.
“I have a file that has photographs of a church that burned in the area and there was no way for a passerby to be able to access 911 because of lack of cell phone coverage.”
Paon says that although Bell Aliant has been working to repair the equipment, residents are still having problems.
“There’s likely corrosion of the lines that have been there for quite some time. The infrastructure itself is quite old and it is infrastructure that was recycled from what I understand was another area in Nova Scotia,” said Paon.
Paon says she has reached out to Bell Aliant, as well as its regulating body, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). She also brought up the issue in the legislature and has been in communication with the minister responsible for the Emergency Management Office, Derek Mombourquette.
“We need assistance with being able to get the regulator, which is CRTC, to properly look into what is happening with the Bell Aliant infrastructure,” said Paon. “The second thing would be that we need to make certain that we have a secondary source of communication in that area… and that would come in the way of cell phone coverage.”
Paon has encouraged residents to write letters detailing the problems they have experienced. She plans to present these letters to the legislature and send them to the CRTC.
On February 13 Cape Breton-Richmond MLA Alana Paon hosted a community meeting for the residents of Framboise, Fourchu and Grand River who expressed frustration over unreliable landline telephone service and the lack of cell phone coverage in their communities.
CRTC Media Relations Manager Patricia Valladao said in an e-mail that telephone service outages occasionally occur in Canada for a variety of reasons and are typically restored very quickly.
“When the CRTC is made aware of a major outage, staff follows up to ensure matters are being dealt with promptly,” said Valladao.
Regarding the outages in Richmond County, Valladao says the CRTC reached out to Bell Aliant in January to better understand the situation.
“Staff will then assess this information to determine if next steps are required,” she added.