Cellular phone outage fixed

By David F. Rooney

If you were feeling cut off and out of touch because you couldn’t connect to the Telus cellular network, you can turn your phone back on and retrieve the messages that may have accumulated over the last several hours.

Cell phone service in Revelstoke was restored at about 2:40 pm. It had been knocked out since about 10 pm on Tuesday evening.

“An antenna on one of our cell towers was damaged last night,”Telus spokesman Shawn Hall said early Wednesday afternoon. “It’s our CDMA antenna, so HSPA+ service is still working —that explains why some people are experiencing an outage, while others are not. HSPA+ is the new technology we launched in November, while CDMA is the existing technology — we have both antennas on the tower.”

Hall said two technicians “snowmobiled in with replacement hardware” on Wednesday morning.

The outage affected only cellular services and only in Revelstoke.