This week Edward Jones brokers are making trades the good old fashion way — by telephone.

U.S. newspapers reported on Monday that the company’s communications satellite went offline early Sunday morning, rendering computers useless in the company’s 9,400 North American branch offices.

Gary Reamey, head of Edward Jones’ Canadian operations says Canadian brokers are affected, but the problem should be rectified by the end of the week. Until then brokers are executing orders by fax and telephone, dialing into the head office using phone lines and trainee laptops to retrieve client contact information when needed, and sharing resources of offices that are already back on line.

On Sunday nearly 250 Edward Jones employees mobilized at the company’s home offices in Mississauga, Ont. and St. Louis, Mo.

“We have contingency plans, but until you use them with an emergency of sorts you never get to test them,” says Reamey. “We had plans in place, that’s why it was easy for us to get 250 employees into the home offices to make calls to 9,400 brokers, and get it all done in an afternoon.”

He says about 20% of branch office satellite dishes are already repositioned to the company’s new satellite. Each needs to be repositioned manually to adjust for the 2 degree difference. With 400 technicians, the company says between 150 and 200 branches are coming online every hour.

Reamey says the problem will probably only cost the company US$250 for each branch office, the cost to have a technician adjust a satellite dish. “Customer orders are being taken care of,” he says. Even so, with more than 9,000 offices, the bill could come in well over US$2 million.

The company says no client data was lost or affected by the satellite problems. The company’s U.K. division, headquartered in London, also remains unaffected.