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CTV News
05-07-2025
- General
- CTV News
Bell, Telus continue to cast blame for 911 outage in Manitoba
Bell and Telus continue to spar over who is responsible for a 911 outage earlier this year. Two of the largest telecom companies in Canada continue to point fingers at each other over a 911 outage that left dozens of Manitobans unable to reach emergency services, including the family of a man who suffered a fatal heart attack. The outage took place on March 22 and lasted for 38 hours and 45 minutes. Telus has said 59 people tried calling 911 during the outage, placing a total of 177 calls. None got through. Among those 177 calls were the desperate pleas for help from the family of Dean Switzer. Switzer suffered a heart attack at his home outside Fisher Branch on March 23. His family and friends—all Telus customers—tried calling 911 about 18 times but were unable to get through. READ MORE: 'Hang up, try later': Manitoba family unable to contact 911 during deadly heart attack In the months since the outage, Telus and Bell have filed reports and issued several statements to media – both placing the blame on the other. The most recent of which came on June 28, when Bell—CTV's parent company—filed its incident report with the CRTC. Bell—Manitoba's 911 network provider—said one of its 911 routes required a reset, which took four minutes to complete. When resets are required, Bell said it has a second route through which carriers can send 911 calls. It noted no other carriers had problems placing 911 calls the night of the outage. After the reset, Bell claimed Telus stopped sending 911 calls through Bell. 'It is only when Telus took action on its side of the network that calls then resumed,' Bell said in the report. 'This indicates the underlying issue as to why Telus ceased sending traffic following the reset is likely within Telus' network, as it was resolved through actions on the Telus side of the network.' Bell alleged Telus did not have a proper fail-safe in place and did not appropriately report the severity of the incident. Telus previously issued a report to the CRTC saying a technician was sent out to investigate the outage the night it happened. 'The Telus technician who attended to the outage did not follow the accepted protocols between Bell and Telus to alert about an outage affecting 911 circuits and did not follow Telus' standard practices by failing to escalate the issue with the company,' the report reads. The technician has since been disciplined, Telus said. In a statement to CTV News sent Thursday, Telus said there is 'no evidence' to suggest its 911 services would have been disrupted had the initial Bell outage not taken place. '…action was required by both Bell and Telus to bring Telus' 911 connectivity back online, as it was the sequencing of the reset that fully restored service,' the company said in a statement. 'We have been transparent about the process failure on our side, acknowledging that our outage notification procedures with Bell were not properly followed.' -With files from CTV's Danton Unger and Devon McKendrick
Winnipeg Free Press
03-07-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
Bell, Telus spar over blame for 40-hour cellphone outage
Bell is pointing the finger back at Telus as the Canadian telecoms fight over which is to blame for a 40-hour outage during which a Manitoba man suffered a fatal heart attack and desperate family members couldn't get through to 911. In an eight-page letter sent to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on June 27, Bell said the technical failure happened on the Telus side of the 911 cellphone system. Telus has said publicly and to the CRTC that the problem was due to 'an equipment failure on the Bell facilities' and 'Telus does not know the reason for this failure.' Philippe Gauvin, Bell's assistant general counsel, disputed that in the letter. 'As Telus knows, that explanation is inaccurate and unsupported by the facts,' he wrote. 'Telus misleadingly portrays a recent 911 outage for its customers in Manitoba as being due to an equipment failure on Bell facilities.' SUPPLIED Dean Switzer of Fisher Branch died of a heart attack on March 23, two days before his 56th birthday. SUPPLIED Dean Switzer of Fisher Branch died of a heart attack on March 23, two days before his 56th birthday. Gauvin said Bell is committed to ensuring all parties maintain the highest level of reliability for 911 service and that Canadians have confidence in it. Dean Switzer, 55, died on March 23, two days before his 56th birthday, while family and friends near Fisher Branch placed 22 calls to 911 — only to receive a message that said 'hang up and call back later.' They frantically performed CPR on him for 90 minutes. An ambulance finally came after an off-duty RCMP officer went to their detachment to call emergency services. Last month, Telus reported to the CRTC that a review of the incident found 177 unsuccessful calls had been made to 911 by 59 Manitobans from the time the service went down on March 22 at 8:15 p.m. to when it was restored at about noon on March 24. Telus said after it became aware of the problem, it was fixed in a little more than an hour. It said it has disciplined an employee over the incident and has since added a double backup system if the 911 system goes down, as well as a third backup where calls would go to a live operator. Raymond Switzer, Dean's father, said Wednesday the family is considering legal action against Telus. '(Originally), I didn't want anything from Telus,' Switzer, 78, said. 'I just said I didn't want what happened to us to happen to another family. That's all I wanted. I've changed my mind since then. 'They don't give a rat's ass what happens to us.' Switzer said Telus sent a letter to the family, which angered him further. 'They asked for a photo of my son so they could always remember what happened — I said that's not happening.' Switzer, who said he backs calls by the Progressive Conservative party for an inquiry, said he still doesn't understand why an audio message told callers to call back rather than just saying the system was out of service. 'Because of that, they just kept calling,' he said. 'I'm not sure if my son would be around with us if he'd got help faster, but it didn't help.' 'They don't give a rat's ass what happens to us.'–Raymond Switzer Bell noted in its letter to the CRTC that Telus reached out with questions the day before Telus submitted its final report on the incident on May 16. Bell said it hadn't had a chance to respond before the report was submitted. Bell said those questions Telus had 'indicate that, far from being final and despite Telus' misleading claims regarding the cause of the failure, Telus was still uncertain, and may still be uncertain, with respect to the actual root cause of why Telus ceased sending 911 traffic to Bell during the outage.' Bell said only Telus, and no other cellphone carrier, was affected with an outage to its 911 calls, after one of its two gateways for emergency calls did a four-minute reset. The telecom also noted 'that media reports continue to indicate that Telus is, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, attempting to shift the blame publicly for the outage experienced by its customers to Bell. 'While we tried to give Telus the opportunity to correct the record itself, it has chosen not to do so.' A Bell spokeswoman said the company would not be commenting further on its CRTC submission. A spokesman for Telus said in a statement that Bell's submission 'largely aligns with Telus' previous reports, acknowledging the initial network disruption originated on Bell's network. Sundays Kevin Rollason's Sunday newsletter honouring and remembering lives well-lived in Manitoba. 'There is no evidence to suggest our 911 services would have been disrupted had the initial Bell outage not taken place, and action was required by both Bell and Telus to bring Telus' 911 connectivity back online, as it was the sequencing of the reset that fully restored service. We have been transparent about the process failure on our side, acknowledging that our outage notification procedures with Bell were not properly followed.' A spokeswoman for the CRTC said the regulator is reviewing the information it has received from Bell and Telus. 'As this remains an ongoing matter, we cannot comment further at this time,' said Mirabella Salem. PC MLA Derek Johnson (Interlake-Gimli) said a public inquiry is necessary. '(The two companies) are playing the liability hot potato, not me, not me,' Johnson said. In a statement, Natural Resources Minister Ian Bushie said 'our No. 1 priority is the safety of all Manitobans and we will continue to work with the CRTC and the federal government to ensure that rural and remote Manitobans have access to 911 services when they need it most.' Kevin RollasonReporter Kevin Rollason is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He graduated from Western University with a Masters of Journalism in 1985 and worked at the Winnipeg Sun until 1988, when he joined the Free Press. He has served as the Free Press's city hall and law courts reporter and has won several awards, including a National Newspaper Award. Read more about Kevin. Every piece of reporting Kevin produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
CTV News
26-06-2025
- General
- CTV News
Report on Manitoba Telus outage reveals how many 911 calls weren't able to connect
A new report into a Telus network outage in March reveals how many people were unable to get through to 911. Nearly 60 people were unable to get through to 911 during a Telus network outage in March. In a new report to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) from Telus on June 16, the company said an outage started just after 10 p.m. on March 22 and lasted until March 24 after 1 p.m. Telus said the outage involved facilities that connect Telus to Bell's 911 network, which directs calls to Brandon's Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP). Telus said a technician was sent out shortly after the outage started to investigate what happened. 'The Telus technician who attended to the outage did not follow the accepted protocols between Bell and Telus to alert about an outage affecting 911 circuits and did not follow Telus' standard practices by failing to escalate the issue with the company,' the report reads. Telus said the technician who responded has been disciplined. Telus' 911 team learned about the outage on March 24 around noon and worked with Bell to fix the issue, the report said. During that nearly 40-hour period, Telus said 59 people tried to call 911 around 177 times but were unable to get through. Dean Switzer's family and friends tried to call 911 around 18 times on March 23 when he suffered a heart attack. A family friend who is an RCMP officer was eventually able to get an ambulance to the house, but the 55-year-old died later that night. Telus said equipment failure was the reason for the outage, but the company doesn't know why the equipment failed. 'The failure on the Bell facilities lasted approximately four minutes. However, this failure has the effect of causing failure of the eight Bell network circuits leased by Telus, which comprise both primary and redundant connections and whose function is to deliver 911 traffic from Telus' wireless network to Bell's 911 network destined for the Brandon PSAP.' Following the outage, Telus said it has reviewed what happened and has now put in an alternate route to ensure 911 calls can still connect in the case of another network failure. If this option also fails, Telus said calls will be rerouted to its operator service team. 'This new call routing will provide an added layer of reliability and resiliency to the enhanced 911 call environment. Telus confirms that with these backup processes in place, 911 calls will continue to complete even with an equipment outage of this kind.'
CTV News
25-06-2025
- General
- CTV News
177 calls didn't make it through to 911 during Telus outage in March: new report
A woman walks in front of the Telus head office is shown in Toronto on Thursday, Feb. 11, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn Nearly 60 people were unable to get through to 911 during a Telus network outage in March. In a new report to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) from Telus on June 16, the company said an outage started just after 10 p.m. on March 22 and lasted until March 24 after 1 p.m. Telus said the outage involved facilities that connect Telus to Bell's 911 network, which directs calls to Brandon's Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP). Telus said a technician was sent out shortly after the outage started to investigate what happened. 'The Telus technician who attended to the outage did not follow the accepted protocols between Bell and Telus to alert about an outage affecting 911 circuits and did not follow Telus' standard practices by failing to escalate the issue with the company,' the report reads. Telus said the technician who responded has been disciplined. Telus' 911 team learned about the outage on March 24 around noon and worked with Bell to fix the issue, the report said. During that nearly 40-hour period, Telus said 59 people tried to call 911 around 177 times but were unable to get through. Dean Switzer's family and friends tried to call 911 around 18 times on March 23 when he suffered a heart attack. A family friend who is an RCMP officer was eventually able to get an ambulance to the house, but the 55-year-old died later that night. Telus said equipment failure was the reason for the outage, but the company doesn't know why the equipment failed. 'The failure on the Bell facilities lasted approximately four minutes. However, this failure has the effect of causing failure of the eight Bell network circuits leased by Telus, which comprise both primary and redundant connections and whose function is to deliver 911 traffic from Telus' wireless network to Bell's 911 network destined for the Brandon PSAP.' Following the outage, Telus said it has reviewed what happened and has now put in an alternate route to ensure 911 calls can still connect in the case of another network failure. If this option also fails, Telus said calls will be rerouted to its operator service team. 'This new call routing will provide an added layer of reliability and resiliency to the enhanced 911 call environment. Telus confirms that with these backup processes in place, 911 calls will continue to complete even with an equipment outage of this kind.'
Winnipeg Free Press
24-06-2025
- General
- Winnipeg Free Press
Telus outage in March shut down 177 calls to 911 from Manitobans
The scope of a 40-hour outage that affected Manitoba Telus cellphone users in March is more extensive than first reported — it turns out 59 people frantically dialled 911 without reaching help. The Free Press has reported that family and friends of a Fisher Branch-area man who died of a heart attack had desperately called 911 for 90 minutes, unaware the system was out of service on their Telus-connected phones. In a report, sent to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission last week, Telus said a review discovered 177 unsuccessful calls were made to 911, by 59 individual Manitobans, from when the service went down on March 22 at 8:15 p.m. to when it came up again on March 24 at about noon. On March 23, 55-year-old Dean Switzer died while family and friends placed 22 calls to 911, which were never answered. They desperately performed CPR on him for 90 minutes. Only after they reached out to an off-duty RCMP officer in the area, whom they knew, were emergency crews alerted. The officer went to the detachment and called an ambulance. Telus blamed the outage on 'an equipment failure on the Bell facilities, that are part of the 911 network that Telus interconnects with Bell to send calls… Telus does not know the reason for this failure.' But Telus does admit, in the June 16 submission, it has disciplined one of its own employees over the incident. The telecommunications company said while the employee was paged within two minutes of the original outage, they failed to follow protocols between Telus and Bell 'to escalate the issue within the company. This contributed to the length of the delay for this outage to be remedied.' The report also says that once the Telus 911 team became aware of the problem on March 24, it was fixed in just over an hour. In response, Telus has added a double backup system, so 911 calls can still go through automatically if the main system goes down, and, if both of those also fail, it has added a third backup in which calls would be rerouted to live operators who would assist the caller and manually connect the call to emergency services. Telus told the CRTC it couldn't divulge further details about the outage because doing so could aid its competitors and help 'bad actors' shut down the country's 911 networks. The Switzer family could not be reached for comment. 'It is heartbreaking.'–Interlake Gimli MLA Derek Johnson Progressive Conservative MLA Derek Johnson said he still believes the province has to call an inquiry to probe the outage. 'It is heartbreaking,' Johnson said on Tuesday. 'I can't imagine the emotional stress families went through at their time of need. We've consistently been calling for an inquiry on this. We have to get this so no other Manitoban has this happen to them.' He said the NDP government 'is failing Manitobans' by not holding an inquiry. Mike Moroz, the minister for innovation and new technology, said Telus did not provide the additional information to the Manitoba government. 'We only found out by looking online at the CRTC,' Moroz said. 'We have no regulatory authority over telecoms. They are providing information to the people who regulate them.' Moroz said the government wants Manitobans to have access to 911 when they need it. 'We always have to bear in mind that this is an absolute tragedy which fell on the Switzer family,' he said. 'Our condolences go out to them. 'We are fortunate, now that we see the number of calls that went to 911, we are very fortunate that it wasn't worse than it was.' Sundays Kevin Rollason's Sunday newsletter honouring and remembering lives well-lived in Manitoba. Moroz said he has not heard from any of the other dozens of Manitobans who unsuccessfully called 911 on that weekend. 'I am certainly pleased to see some additional support has been put in to make sure that 911 is there for Manitobans when we need them.' Telus spokeswoman Liz Sauve said the latest Telus response to the CRTC was issued after the regulatory body asked the company for more information that could be released publicly. Sauve said the latest information provided 'a detailed account of what happened and how we've used learnings from this outage to further enhance our policies and procedures in partnership with Bell to prevent a similar situation from happening again.' Kevin RollasonReporter Kevin Rollason is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He graduated from Western University with a Masters of Journalism in 1985 and worked at the Winnipeg Sun until 1988, when he joined the Free Press. He has served as the Free Press's city hall and law courts reporter and has won several awards, including a National Newspaper Award. Read more about Kevin. Every piece of reporting Kevin produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
