Tenants in a seniors complex in Osborne Village remain without phone lines and there is no word when they will be restored.
Residents of Villa Cabrini on River Avenue lost access to their Bell MTS-operated landlines Aug. 19 and several of the building’s amenities has been inaccessible since, including pull cords in each suite (which are used to signal medical emergencies), panic buttons and security alarms.
The 123-unit building at 433 River Ave. was forced to enlist resident volunteers to monitor the front entrance, which is accessed via buzzcode connected to the building’s main phone line.
NIC ADAM / FREE PRESS
Villa Cabrini, a seniors home in Osborne Village, remains without phone service and there is no word when it will be restored.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the building was still out of service, tenant coordinator Samantha Silvester said.
In an emailed statement Tuesday night, Bell MTS spokesperson Patricia Garcia said the outage stemmed from “extensive damage to Bell network cables caused by a third party doing work in the vicinity last week.”
“Our teams were immediately on site and restored service for some customers in the area. As there is some structural damage, the repairs are continuing,” Garcia said.
Tenant Concetta Manfredi, who has been without a phone for nine days, told the Free Press she’s considering asking Bell to compensate her for the lost service.
“A week with nothing? It’s ridiculous,” she said.
The telecom company is working with contractors in the area who are digging in the vicinity of Bell network infrastructure to avoid more outages, Garcia said.
Ongoing work in Osborne Village, including on River Avenue between Donald Street and Wellington Crescent to install protected bike lanes, has been ongoing since late last year.
City of Winnipeg spokesperson Julie Dooley said no reports of incidents involving phone lines has been reported to the Public Works department, nor has the city undertaken any underground work in the area in weeks.
nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca
Nicole Buffie
Multimedia producer
Nicole Buffie is a multimedia producer who reports for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom in 2023. Read more about Nicole.
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