A recent 911 service disruption in several Canadian provinces lasting nearly 90 minutes was caused by an undetected bug in Bell’s software, the company revealed in a report on Friday. The outage affected Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island at 3:13 a.m. ET on September 17.
Bell clarified that the incident was not a cyber attack and did not result from any planned or unplanned changes. The glitch impacted Bell’s NG9-1-1 system, designed to enhance emergency response by providing detailed information to dispatchers.
The company resolved the issue and restored service at 4:40 a.m., implementing a permanent fix later that morning. Although the disruption affected calls across six provinces, the majority of calls during the outage were managed successfully by backup systems.
Bell assured that no critical public safety incidents resulted from the missed calls. The company, taking responsibility for the outage, stated its commitment to ensuring the reliability of emergency calling services and preventing a recurrence of such incidents.
According to the report, early alarms at the start of the outage failed to trigger a crisis response promptly. Bell is investigating the alarms’ failure and has put additional monitoring mechanisms in place for better response in the future.
The report also highlighted Bell’s efforts to enhance system monitoring and address vulnerabilities without compromising public safety. The wider system details were redacted from the report to prevent potential exploitation by hackers.
911 services in Canada are connected to regional legacy telephone providers, with Bell serving provinces from Manitoba to the Atlantic, while other regions are covered by different providers. Despite the resilience of Canada’s 911 system, technology issues can occur, emphasizing the importance of continuous improvement and preparedness.
The CRTC has set a deadline for decommissioning legacy 911 systems in Canada by March 31, which was extended by two years in early 2025.