Residents of Norman Wells say they’ve spent at least the past three days without cell service. The cause of the outage isn’t clear. Bell says it’s working on a fix.
Multiple residents contacting Cabin Radio on Monday said their phones had not been able to connect to a network since late Saturday.
A Cabin Radio reporter in the Sahtu community at the weekend similarly wasn’t able to access cell service – calls or data – on Sunday.
“Mobile service across town is currently down,” the Town of Norman Wells confirmed in a Monday statement.
“The cause of the outage is currently unknown. We’ll keep everyone updated as more information becomes available.”
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While the town said calls to 911 would work even without a functioning cell tower, some residents said their attempts to call the emergency number didn’t go through.
In the NWT, most cell infrastructure is owned and operated by Bell. Other networks, like Rogers and Telus, do deals that allow them to use existing infrastructure in the territory – like Bell towers – without building their own.
According to Bell’s coverage map, the community ordinarily has LTE service. (Some northern communities without LTE are in the process of being upgraded as mobile network operators look to switch off 3G service in the coming months.)
“Technicians are currently investigating an issue that may be affecting some mobility services (including LTE) in the Norman Wells area,” Bell senior manager of media relations David Marcille told Cabin Radio by email on Monday afternoon.
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“We are working to restore service as quickly as possible and thank customers for their patience.”
The nature of the technical problem was not specified. Nor was it immediately clear whether the company had technicians on the ground in Norman Wells, a Sahtu community of about 750 residents.
Correction: September 14, 2026 – 15:32 MT. We initially said our reporter couldn’t connect to cell services in Norman Wells on Saturday. In fact, they had trouble connecting on Sunday.
