Will I be impacted by the Daylight Saving Time (DST) change on November 1, 2026?

Starting Sunday, November 1, 2026, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, the Northwest Territories and certain communities in northwestern Ontario (Kenora, Dryden, Fort Frances, Atikokan, Rainy River District, Pickle Lake and New Osnaburgh) will officially stop observing Daylight Saving Time (DST). Following Saskatchewan and the Yukon, which already stay on permanent time year-round, these regions will remain on their current time offsets and will not roll their clocks back one hour (all other provinces and territories are not impacted).

To ensure a smooth transition for customers living in or travelling through these areas, Bell is proactively updating our network. Because mobile phones and IoT devices rely on global software databases to display time zone names, you may notice display discrepancies in your settings or time-based applications until your equipment is refreshed. We recommend taking a few simple steps ahead of time so your business operations and time-sensitive hardware are not impacted.

We recommend taking two simple steps on October 30 or 31 (or upon arrival if traveling):

1. Check settings: Ensure "Set Automatically" or "Automatic Date and Time" is turned ON in your device's settings.
2. Power cycle your device by powering down your device and then powering it back ON. This forces your device to connect to our updated network stream and download the correct time parameters.

If your mobile phone or IoT device fails to receive the proactive network update, it might automatically roll back by one hour on Sunday morning. If this happens:

• Late Sunday morning alarms (mobile phones): Any alarms or calendar alerts you have set for Sunday morning will ring one hour late (for example, sounding at 8 a.m. instead of 7 a.m.), which could cause you to miss important appointments, shift handovers, hotel checkouts or flights.
• Inaccurate data logs and timestamps (IoT): Connected sensors, fleet trackers or telemetry devices may record events with a one-hour discrepancy, which can affect real-time monitoring, compliance reporting or audit logs.
• Delayed automated schedules (IoT): Gateways, routers or industrial controllers that run on scheduled timers (such as automated power-downs, batch data uploads or scheduled reboots) may trigger one hour later than intended.
• System sync or dashboard discrepancies (IoT): Applications that correlate device time with central servers (such as GPS fleet tracking, security tokens or VPN connections) may show reporting mismatches until the device is power-cycled.

Always perform the network refresh when you land or cross borders.

If you are traveling into British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, the Northwest Territories, or some parts of Ontario (Kenora, Dryden, Fort Frances, Atikokan, Rainy River District, Pickle Lake, and New Osnaburgh), your device needs to register with the local network towers to learn that it shouldn't roll back. As soon as you arrive in the affected province, simply power cycle your device by powering down your device and then powering it back ON. This forces your device to instantly fetch the local time rules from the nearest tower and prevents your device from mistakenly shifting back an hour.

Yes, this is normal. Your clock will show the 100% correct local time, but your settings menu might display an incorrect time zone label (such as "MDT" instead of "PDT"). This occurs because device manufacturers update time zone labels through software updates, which can take time to roll out globally. Your actual time will remain perfectly accurate.

If you want to be absolutely sure your clock is accurate on Sunday morning, you can cross-reference your device with an independent, official timekeeper by visiting timeanddate.com.