A number of Northwestel customers experienced internet and phone problems on Tuesday, marking the third such disruption in over a week.

Internet access in parts of Yukon, Northwest Territories and northern British Columbia slowed down significantly or ground to a halt around 12 p.m. PT on Tuesday, officials with the northern telecommunications company have confirmed.

Some Northwestel customers have also not able to make long-distance phone calls to locations in southern Canada.

Northwestel spokesperson Sunny Patch told CBC News that the company rerouted some of the affected internet traffic onto an alternate network it had set up following two similar disruptions last week.

All three recent internet disruptions have been traced back to a severed fibre-optic cable in northern Alberta.

Patch said technicians were en route to the site of the latest severed cable late Tuesday afternoon to assess the damage and figure out what happened.