Province rips Bell over second 911 outage

A 911 outage that lasted about 90 minutes in Manitoba and other provinces early Thursday morning was caused by a problem with Bell’s next-generation network amid concerns about recurring disruptions.

It’s not yet known how many 911 calls did not go through after Bell detected the outage at 2:13 a.m. Service was restored at 3:40 a.m., spokeswoman Elise von Scheel said.

“We continue to investigate the root cause of the issue,” von Scheel wrote in an email.

Backup systems kicked in. Von Scheel said the “vast majority” of calls from Bell customers were rerouted to 911 communications centres, or public safety answering points.

Bell is Manitoba’s 911 service operator. The outage also affected the telecom’s 911 services in Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.

Premier Wab Kinew was in touch with Bell president and CEO Mirko Bibic after the outage, said Innovation and New Technology Minister Mike Moroz.

“He expressed our government’s deep dissatisfaction with the incident and Bell’s response, and the fact we’re having to have the same conversation with them over and over and over again,” said Moroz, referring to previous outages.

“We need a solve to this problem. Manitobans deserve to have the emergency services available to them when they need them. It shouldn’t be a bit of roulette as it has been here in the last little while.”

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission regulates telecoms. Kinew raised concerns with Prime Minister Mark Carney and Bibic after a 911 outage, lasting more than three hours, affected all of Manitoba except Winnipeg on July 22.

At the time, Bell said next-generation 911 will be more reliable than the “legacy architecture” Manitoba’s system currently uses.

The CRTC directed telecoms to update their networks for next-generation 911 voice services by March 31, 2027. Bell has said it expects to make the switch in Manitoba by the end of 2026.

Moroz said he’s unable to disclose any other steps the province is taking regarding Bell and 911.

“All potential options are being discussed,” he said.

Bell informed the province of Thursday’s outage after it was resolved, “which is quite counter to the agreement we believed we had,” Moroz said. The province previously asked to be informed when an outage is detected.

Winnipeg police used social media to advise people to call the service’s non-emergency line until the outage was resolved.

Further review determined 911 calls continued to be received by the service’s communications centre, police said. Staff are working with Bell to determine if any calls failed to get through.

In a statement, Mayor Scott Gillingham said any disruption is a serious concern because 911 is a lifeline in an emergency.

Nick Kasper, president of United Fire Fighters of Winnipeg Local 867, said the union stands by elected leaders’ calls for 911 providers to ensure network reliability and redundancy.

“If someone’s experiencing cardiac arrest, a fire or another life-threatening emergency, seconds matter,” he said. “People need to know when they call for help, someone will answer.”

Manitoba’s two primary 911 communications centres are in Winnipeg and Brandon. The latter handles calls outside Winnipeg. Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett said disruption to the city’s 911 centre was minor compared with the July outage.

He said about five calls from cellphones did not get through, but third-party software used by the centre and Bell allowed staff to obtain the callers’ details and phone them back.

Fawcett said it sounds like a glitch occurred while Bell transitions to next-generation 911 in the provinces where it operates the service.

“That’s why Manitoba wasn’t really impacted like some other places were because we haven’t really switched over yet,” he said.

“We want to see that next-generation go through. Hopefully, this is the only glitch we get as they transfer over across the country.”

Manitoba RCMP’s operational communications centre was not affected by the outage, spokeswoman Michelle Lissel said.

Von Scheel said Bell is providing information to public safety answering points, applicable governments and the CRTC.

CRTC spokeswoman Mirabella Salem said Bell is required to provide a post-outage report within 14 days.

She said the report, which will be “carefully” reviewed, must detail the causes, steps taken to resolve the outage, how emergency and accessibility services were affected and plans to prevent similar outages.

Bell’s competitors, including Telus and Rogers, connect to Manitoba’s 911 network when their customers call, but the firms do not own or operate the infrastructure.

Telus said its investigation found the issue was resolved at about 4:30 a.m. across the impacted regions. Rogers’ system is designed to reroute its customers’ calls to a third-party answering point when a 911 network or connection fails.

The July 22 outage prevented 911 calls from reaching Brandon’s communications centre. Bell told the CRTC 84 callers could not get through, with no critical incidents or “adverse public safety outcomes” reported.

Bell’s report said the outage resulted from three independent failures. Specifics of the first failure were redacted.

The second failure was a third-party fibre optic cable cut in Winnipeg, believed to be related to roadwork, that occurred before the first failure was resolved.

The third failure involved a backup system that did not automatically reroute calls. The reason for that failure was redacted, but the report cited concerns about “vintage” technology.

Bell told the CRTC it doubled the number of backup routes to four in a bid to prevent similar outages.

Manitobans received emergency alerts on their cellphones during the July outage. Nova Scotia was the lone province to issue an alert Thursday, according to Pelmorex Corp., which operates the national Alert Ready system. The alert was issued shortly before 7 a.m. local time.

The outage occurred while most Manitobans were sleeping. Moroz said the middle of the night would be a “challenging time” to issue an emergency alert.

“The previous occasion, we were unhappy with the way that Bell was handling the situation, and we issued the alert,” he said. “Since they didn’t tell us about (Thursday’s) outage until after it was back up, it kept us out of that conversation, which is unfortunate.”

More than 50 callers were unable to access 911 services during a Bell outage April 28. In March 2025, relatives of Fisher Branch man, who were Telus customers, were unable to get through to 911 when he suffered a fatal heart attack.

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca