Cellphone service went down in large swaths of Atlantic Canada on Friday morning, hampering many emergency services' communications.
A Bell map indicated outages in Halifax, St. John's, N.L., Saint John, N.B., Prince Edward Island, and Fredericton, among other places.
The outages weren't confined to Bell, with Telus confirming it is also down: "We're currently investigating a network issue affecting mobility customers in the East."
The outages were reported in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, P.E.I. and parts of Ontario.
Some internet service was also affected.
An emailed statement from a Bell spokesman issued at 11:50 a.m. local time said, "there is a service outage currently 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."
It appeared to be affecting emergency communications in some parts of the region, and people are being advised to try non-emergency numbers to contact emergency services if 911 doesn't work.
According to social media reports, Eastlink service was available in at least some areas.
The situation varied from location to location.
Cpl. Dal Hutchinson of the RCMP in Nova Scotia said that its 911 service was working, depending on what cellular phone was being used to call in.
A tweet from the Emergency Measures Organization in the province said that the best way to reach 911 was through a landline as of noon local time.
In St. John's, a spokesman for the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary was busy preparing information for citizens needing emergency services.
Const. Geoff Higdon said "we have no idea of how wide (the outage) is. We can't call Bell Aliant."
Emergency Health Services in Nova Scotia said it is "experiencing a province-wide communications outage," and has told all on-duty crews to return to their stations in a tweet.
A tweet from the fire service in Gander, N.L., reports a "major outage," and says 911 service is unavailable.