Disruptions of CityWest’s Services on Cortes and Quadra Islands

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - CityWest’s internet service for Cortes Island was cut off again, sometime after 10:44 on Saturday, March 8, and not restored until after 9:00 on Monday, March 10. This is the third or fourth time in the last 12 months. The outage did not affect CKTZ, which relies upon Mascon de TELUS, but did shut down numerous CityWest customers (including Cortes Currents). ‘Rumour’ has it that the fibre cable was cut somewhere on the underwater stretch between Denman Island and Williams Beach.  “They require a special "marine team" to take care of it and it will be weather dependent. Hopefully the break will be near shore, but they may have to pull up the entire length of cable to find the break and fix it.” One of CityWest’s public relations people confirmed there was a break in the cable, but could not say where. However the recorded announcement on their phone in line stated:  “We are seeing services affected in Williams Beach, Stories Beach, Manson's Landing, Bold Point, Heriot Bay, Whaletown, Open Bay, Granite Bay, Chatham Point, Blink Channel, Bliss Landing, Seaford, Klahoose, and Gillies Bay.” So the rumour was true, at least in regard to where the break occured. There are some questions about CityWest’s recorded announcement. For starters, it says services are affected in Bold Point, Open Bay, Granite Bay and Heriot Bay - which are all Quadra Island locations. Only Regional Director Robyn Mawhinney, who lives on Quadra, has yet to hear of ANYONE being connected on Quadra Island and, up until this point, there has been no mention of Heriot Bay being served. A number of Cortes Island residents have been connected for over a year, but a lot of people have not. It is not clear which group is in the majority. In a previous post, Cortes Currents mentioned that numerous households in Squirrel Cove, Whaletown and Mansons Landing have yet to be connected. Since then, a source who wishes to remain anonyomous, claims that service has yet to be brought to Seaford Road. Don Hall, from Tiber Bay, recently stated there is no service in his area either. “We expressed interest early on to get hooked up. They used to phone us and they used to try to sell us things. They ran a line from our local road to our house, but they never ran the line from the main fiber optic network into where we live at Tiber Bay. They never hooked up our house either. The last time I ever heard anything from them was three years ago when they scheduled an appointment to hook up the internal to our house. They never showed up for that and we never heard from them again.” The Strathcona Regional District has not been talking about the connected coast project very much lately, but according to the press release on their website, this is “a joint venture between the Strathcona Regional District (SRD) and CityWest" which “will be managed and implemented by CityWest and the Strathcona Regional District.”