MTS said equipment failure caused service outages Monday.

Late Monday night the company restored phone service to thousands of landlines and cellular phones around the province.

The company issued a notice Monday afternoon over reports of problems with landline and wireless services.

"This has affected the ability of non-MTS landline customers being able to access 911 services," it said in a press release.

"MTS is investigating the cause of the interruption and is working as quickly as possible to restore all services," said MTS.

Earlier Monday, it said wireless issues had been fixed, but customers still reported problems shortly after 4:30 p.m. on Dec. 22.

Manitoba Hydro ‏also Tweeted information around 6:15 p.m. Monday for its customers and said people could report Hydro emergencies or report outages via email to: customerservice@hydro.mb.ca

Winnipeg police said some people are having trouble getting through to 911, but it seemed to only be affecting certain neighbourhoods.

If somebody is experiencing an emergency and is unable to get through to 911, they should try a neighbour’s house or get someone’s attention outside in the hopes they have a phone that is working, said police.

Phone lines at the COMM Centre are not down so if you can find a phone that works, you should be able to get through to 911.

Staff at the 911 COMM Centre are working with out-of-province contacts to try and find a temporary solution until MTS can restore proper service.

Non-MTS service providers use the MTS infrastructure and that is why they are having problems.

Check on elderly friends and neighbours and those in poor health because they might not be able to access emergency services, said police.

Around 9 p.m. Monday, MTS said it had restored all wireless and wireline services impacted by the outage.

MTS said it will continue to closely monitor the situation.

The company said that although the equipment that failed Monday had a backup system, it was not working properly either.
- with a report from Ben Miljure