Cellular phone service made the connection in the west end of the district last Tuesday and Wednesday when the Barwick and Rainy River towers were turned on.
And Sharon Hacio, general manager of Norwest Mobility, said were was traffic on the towers almost immediately.
While the official turn-on date was Monday, word spread fast as anxious cell phone customers discovered the towers were up and running.
Lance Lindal of Atwood Enterprises, the only cellular phone dealer in Rainy River, literally was swamped with business last Wednesday and Thursday.
He had just received a shipment of new phones and by Thursday they were all spoken for.
While Hacio said the first few days would involve testing of the new towers for any areas that might need “tweaking,” she said phone traffic was almost overwhelming by Thursday.
“Yesterday, the Rainy River tower processed over 700 calls,” she said Friday.
It’s hoped the tower in Nestor Falls will be turned on in the next two-three weeks. From there, the next stop for the crews will be Atikokan.
Hacio said once Atikokan is on later this spring, they plan to backfill the corridor from Thunder Bay to Rainy River with towers in between the major communities.
Getting the service up and running in the west end of the district was delayed nearly two months. First, work stopped in the wake of an accident that saw a worker plunge to his death at the Blackhawk tower in December.
Then there was an embargo by Bell Canada on all its towers from mid-December to mid-January due to the “Y2K” scare.
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Local News from Across the Rainy River District
