Bell reveals cause behind 87-minute 911 outage across six provinces

Bell has revealed the cause of an 87-minute outage that disrupted 911 services across six provinces on September 17.

PlanHub says the outage affected Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island.

According to the telecom giant’s report to the CRTC, a previously undetected software issue triggered an unexpected condition in its Next-Generation 911 network. Interestingly, Bell noted that it was not a cyberattack and was not caused by a software or network change.

According to the report, the outage first began at 3:13 a.m., with alarms triggered at 3:13 and 3:19. Interestingly, the elements of those alarms that trigger Bell’s “war room” weren’t functioning, and engineers were only alerted roughly 24 minutes after another system detected an unusual drop in traffic for 911 calls.

Bell said that its backup systems handled the vast majority of calls, but noted that some legacy 911 calls did not reach emergency call centres. Bell did not disclose how many calls were missed, but affected 911 centres reported that no critical public safety incidents were connected to the missed calls.

Bell said it installed a permanent fix later that morning and added independent monitoring, along with an end-to-end review of its NG911 infrastructure.

As PlanHub noted, Canada is still transitioning away from its old 911 network to NG911, and the CRTC has ordered the legacy infrastructure to be decommissioned by March 31, 2027.

This outage report also comes as some provinces are starting to charge more for 911 fees, including some of the provinces listed in the outage (Quebec, New Brunswick).

Source: PlanHub