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Service has been restored in Atlantic Canada following widespread cellphone, landline and other telecom service issues on Friday.

In a tweet Friday evening, Bell said the outages were “extraordinary situations” as a result of two major fibre links cut “by 3rd party construction work.”

Earlier in the day, Bell said “accidental cable damage” was the culprit, while Telus said a “cut cable” was to blame.

Today’s outages in Atlantic Canada were extraordinary situations in which 2 major fibre links were cut by 3rd party construction work. — Media Relations (@Bell_News) August 4, 2017

Bell services back in Atlantic after reroute and repair due to accidental cable damage. We apologize to customers for the disruption. — Bell (@Bell) August 4, 2017

“A cut cable has been identified as the root cause of the network outage, affecting approximately 885 LTE cell sites throughout New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island,” a service alert on the Telus website stated.

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“Technicians are on-site, and working towards restoring services as quickly as possible.” Tweet This

Bell, Koodo, Virgin Mobile and Telus issues began Friday morning, with reports of service outages in PEI, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland.

The service providers dealing with the issues all use the same network. Rogers, Fido and Freedom wireless do not; their service was unaffected.

In a statement to Global News Friday morning, Bell confirmed a service outage was affecting “some regions in the Atlantic provinces.”

“Landline, cellular and Internet services may be impacted. Our teams are working to re-establish service as soon as possible,” read the Bell statement. Tweet This

Earlier Friday, Telus posted online a “service interruption” alert for voice, text messaging and data services on mobile devices in the Maritime provinces.

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The hours-long service outage impacted some flights in the region; travellers were urged to check their flight status.

The landline / cell phone outage in Atlantic Canada is impacting some flights. Please check with your airline regarding flight status — Halifax Stanfield (@HfxStanfield) August 4, 2017

Long lines formed at the Halifax airport amid the outage. Air Canada was forced to resort to manually checking in passengers at some of the region’s airports due to “ongoing computer problems,” and offered to waive change fees for local travellers due to the outage.

WestJet’s Moncton contact centre also went offline Friday, with the carrier warning that “wait times are high.”

Local emergency services reported issues communicating with the public as well as personnel.

In a tweet, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary said a “major phone problem” was preventing some people from contacting 911 through both cellphones and landlines, and provided a list of other emergency phone numbers.

URGENT — PLEASE SHARE THESE ALTERNATE WAYS TO CONTACT US IN AN EMERGENCY. PLEASE ONLY USE THESE TO REPORT AN ***EMERGENCY*** PLEASE SHARE pic.twitter.com/GdpWeX9jMf — RNC (@RNC_PoliceNL) August 4, 2017

The St. John’s Regional Fire Department advised people to avoid using their landlines except in the case of an emergency, to avoid overloading the system.

While 911 service was working in Nova Scotia, customers were asked to use landlines to make calls to the emergency line.

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Emergency Health Services (EHS) Nova Scotia issued an urgent message for all on-duty crews to immediately return to their stations amid a “province-wide communications outage.”

1/2 URGENT MESSAGE FOR EHS CREWS: EHS is experiencing a province-wide communications outage. — EHS (@EHS_NS) August 4, 2017

2/2 We require all on-duty crews to immediately return to your station. Monitor your tablets from the station for calls. #EHSOutageAug417 — EHS (@EHS_NS) August 4, 2017

Halifax Fire began using a back-up paging service to communicate with crews, and requested that all available volunteer firefighters report to unstaffed stations immediately. Fire officials urged people to try to call 911 if they were in need of help, and to make their way to a station if they couldn’t get through.

If you need emergency assistance and your phone isn't working go to your nearest fire station https://t.co/TXLVfsKOog (2/2) — Halifax Fire (@hfxfire) August 4, 2017

Nova Scotia’s Emergency Management Office (EMO) activated its Provincial Coordination Centre to provide support to emergency service providers. The EMO encouraged residents to pull together and “please check on your neighbours.”

Customers voiced their frustrations online to providers such as Telus and Bell throughout the day, with social media feeds filling with concerns over lack of service.

David Clark says he can't work his security job because of the cellphone service outage. https://t.co/aBhHmLHQmC #Halifax pic.twitter.com/UipnVUF9JO — Steve Silva (@SteveCSilva) August 4, 2017

Mel Chisholm with @OldTriangleHFX on how the cellphone service outage is impacting things at the restaurant. #Halifax #ATLCellOutage pic.twitter.com/H56mmgQalB — Steve Silva (@SteveCSilva) August 4, 2017

SOUND OFF: How are you being impacted by the service outage?

Note: We may use your response in this or other stories. While we may contact you to follow up we won’t publish your contact info.

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— With Files from Alexander Quon and Sean Previl.