An island-wide outage affected thousands of landlines across Bermuda yesterday – including emergency numbers and the Government’s main switchboard.

A statement from Digicel-BTC said the outage began at about 11.55am and services were restored by 3.20pm.

The statement said: “At approximately 11.55am, Digicel engineers noticed alarms indicating a copper landline issue and the team worked non-stop to have the matter resolved in the shortest time possible.

“Services were restored a few hours later by 3.20pm. Digicel apologises for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

Earlier yesterday, Laura Husband, head of customer care, said: “Our fibre network and mobile customers are fine, the outage only affects our copper network customers.

“As our customers are a top priority for us, we are looking to restore service as soon as possible.”

The outage affected government phone services including the 911 and 211 emergency numbers as well as the Government’s main switchboard.