Landline telephone screw-ups continue to plague Nunavik communities

Nunavimmiut say they’ve had ongoing problems with their landlines, service that is provided through Bell Canada. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

KUUJJUAQ — Charlie Nowkawalk wants to know when his community of Inukjuak can start to rely on its local phone service again.

Over the past few years, Inukjuak and communities throughout Nunavik have been plagued with unreliable and sometimes non-existent long-distance and even local telephone service, delivered through Bell Canada.

It’s the same problem a doctor in Inukjuak complained about almost two years ago, when Dr. François Prévost told media that about three of every four long distance calls made from local health centres didn’t go through.

Nowkawalk, the Kativik Regional Government representative for his community, said not much has changed. He’d like to see another provider move into the region to offer competing service.

“We’re still having have problems with Bell Canada,” he told KRG council meetings in Kuujjuaq Sept. 10. “It’s very often that we experience not being able to make long-distance calls.”

And Nowkawalk is not alone; “this has been the worst year for telephone service,” said the KRG’s chairperson, Maggie Emudluk.

Bell Aliant, the member of the Bell group of companies that services Nunavik, says it’s aware of the problems —not just in Inukjuak but throughout the region.

“We were aware of an issue‎ in Salluit,” a Bell Canada spokesperson told Nunatsiaq News last spring, after receiving reports of poor service in the Hudson Strait community.

“The troubleshooting process required first investigating our network and then when no issues were found we focused on Telesat,” the spokeswomen said.

“Two faulty circuits were found with Telesat and have now been repaired.”

But the problems still persist and now the KRG administration department says it plans to intervene.

But to do that, Nunavimmiut customers of Bell must document the problems as they happen.

“For us, it would be very important to know when and where these problems are happening,” said Jean-François Dumoulin, of KRG’s Tamaani internet service.

“There is a mechanism through the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) to make these kinds of complaints,” Dumoulin told KRG councillors.

“There is an obligation to provide basic telephone service imposed on the local carrier.”

If that doesn’t meet that obligation, customers have recourse, but that requires specific information about where and when problems were noted, Dumoulin said, as the CRTC has no way of monitoring service otherwise.

Given the issues reported across the region, the KRG said it will come up with a strategy to approach both the CRTC and Bell.

In the meantime, Dumoulin encouraged Bell customers to keep track of any issues they’re having.

Nunavik communities have a certain number of long-distance lines. In Inukjuak, for example, there are 16 long-distance lines for a population of about 2,000.

But that means if you’re the 17th person wanting to make a long distance call, you can’t get through.

Satellite phones were distributed to each community following a recommendation of the coroner’s report on the avalanche that struck Kangiqsualujjuaq in 1999.

The coroner also recommended created a dedicated line to health centres and emergency services in the region, something that has never been implemented.

Only four communities in Nunavik have access to cellular phone service, including Kuujjuaq, Salluit, Puvirnituq and Inukjuak.