Four days before the July 8 Rogers mobile phone and internet outage slowed down communication and commerce across Canada, there was a smaller, similar outage affecting Fibre Argenteuil customers in Harrington.
According to Fibre Argenteuil, at approximately 12:25 a.m. on July 5, suspects cut and stole two fibre-optic cables along Route 327 between chemin MacCrimmon and Harrington Town Hall. The two cables supplied internet to all of Harrington, including the town hall and fire station. More than 650 customers were affected by the outage.
The suspects also cut adjacent Bell Canada cables.
Contractors for Fibre Argenteuil began work instantly on July 5 to repair the damage and 500 customers had their internet service restored by that evening. Service was to be restored to the remaining customers on July 6.
