No calls missed during 911 outage, minister says

No calls were missed during a 911 service disruption on P.E.I. Wednesday morning, says the province's minister of public safety.

"We do have that backup number just in case," said Bloyce Thompson, P.E.I.'s minister of public safety.

"This is one of those things, a friendly reminder that it's always important to make sure your protocols are in place. And luckily this was only out for an hour."

The outage was first reported by RCMP on the Island on Twitter at 10:03 a.m. Wednesday. That tweet was followed by one from Island EMS. Service was restored just before 11 a.m.

Alternative phone numbers were provided for emergency services while the technical problem continued.

Outage across Maritimes

Emergency services in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick also reported problems.

Bell Aliant's Isabelle Boulet says the outage affected both landline and cell phone use, and is being traced back to "a network switch failure in Moncton early this morning."

She added: "Our network team is continuing its technical investigation into the outage. Services were disrupted from approximately 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m."

Shortly before 11 a.m., the company tweeted: "We're happy to confirm that service is now restored. Thank you."

And at 11:18 a.m., P.E.I. RCMP tweeted: "911 service has been restored. Please use in the case of an emergency. Take care."

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