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Government cellphone users at Canada’s new defence headquarters have found themselves in a communications dead zone, with federal officials warning it could take up to two years to find a permanent fix.

Rogers, which had been the cellular telecommunication service provider to the federal government, had a cell tower near the former Nortel campus, which by March will house 9,300 military personnel and federal employees.

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But in 2017 — the year Department of National Defence employees started moving to the new Carling Avenue headquarters — the main telecommunications contract went to Bell Canada.

“Bell did not have service coverage in the campus area and once DND began to migrate users to Bell, this issue was raised immediately to the attention of Shared Services Canada and they engaged with Bell,” explained DND spokesman Andrew McKelvey.

To deal with the problem on a temporary basis a portable transmission tower was erected in June 2019 at the Carling Avenue headquarters and small cellular base station will be installed there in March.