The Town of Saugeen Shores wants Bell Canada to compensate the municipality, its citizens, and its businesses following multiple recent Bell network disruptions.
The town voiced its discontent in a letter sent to BCE President and CEO Mirko Bibic, the CRTC, several Crown ministers, and Huron-Bruce M.P. Ben Lobb.
Mayor Luke Charbonneau pointed out how frequent network disruptions in cellphone, landline, and internet service impacted the municipal water system, local businesses, and people's ability to contact emergency services.
Mayor Charbonneau expressed "deep dissatisfaction and disappointment with the repeated failures," as well as a lack of information about the outages or efforts to address the issues, and strategies to prevent similar occurrences in the future.
“I don’t need to tell you that connectivity is essential to maintaining a fully functioning community,” said Charbonneau, emphasizing the Town’s rural location. “I fail to understand how a company with such a large share of this nation’s telecommunications infrastructure cannot make their system more resilient.”
The Town wants to hear from Bibic on how Bell Canada plans to compensate the Town’s affected residents and businesses – as well as the municipality itself – for lost revenue and service.
