An outage that affected 911 services for nearly 90 minutes in multiple Canadian provinces last month was attributed to an undisclosed software glitch in Bell’s system, according to a report released by the company on Friday. The incident, which impacted Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island at 3:13 a.m. ET on Sept. 17, was clarified as not being the result of a cyber attack or any intentional changes.
The glitch was related to Bell’s next generation 911 system, NG9-1-1, which aims to enhance emergency response by providing more detailed information to dispatchers. Bell managed to identify and resolve the issue by 4:40 a.m., implementing a permanent fix later that morning. The company confirmed that most calls during the disruption were handled by backup systems, although some traditional voice calls were missed when directed to call centers using the newer technology.
Despite the missed calls, there were no critical safety incidents reported due to the outage. Bell, in response to the incident, stated its commitment to ensuring the reliability and continuous improvement of emergency calling services to enable Canadians to seek help promptly when needed.
The report also highlighted that initial alarms signaling the outage did not activate the crisis response promptly as intended. The response team only became aware of the issue after a separate alarm system detected a drop in incoming calls. Bell is investigating why the alarms failed and has since implemented additional monitoring mechanisms to prevent similar incidents in the future.
While details about the specific software flaw causing the outage were withheld to prevent potential exploitation by hackers, Bell assured that steps have been taken to safeguard the 911 network from such vulnerabilities. The Canadian 911 system, which relies on legacy telephone providers across different regions, is gradually transitioning to more advanced technologies as mandated by the CRTC.
