Telecom - Commission Letter adressed to Kurt Eby (Pelmorex Corp)
Ottawa, 4 August 2022
Our reference: 8000-C12-202203868
BY EMAIL
Kurt Eby
Director, Regulatory, Government and Affiliate Relations
Pelmorex Corp
2655 Bristol Circle
Oakville, Ontario L6H 7W1
regulatory@pelmorex.com
RE: Emergency Alerting during the Rogers Canada-wide service outage of July 2022
Dear Mr. Eby:
This letter is in relation to the role of Pelmorex Corp (Pelmorex) as the operator of the National Alert Aggregation and Dissemination (NAAD) system and the national service outage experienced by Rogers Communications Canada Inc. (Rogers) that began on 8 July 2022. As widely reported throughout Canada and internationally, this event prevented access to such services as 9-1-1 and emergency alerting in addition to other critical infrastructure and services.
As an initial step, comprehensive information is required in order for the Commission and Canadians to understand what happened, and, just as importantly, what can be done to improve the system including how to mitigate impacts on the National Public Alerting System.
Given the seriousness of this event, and while the Commission considers the complaints and calls for a public inquiry before it, Pelmorex is to provide, by 31 August 2022, comprehensive answers and any supporting information, to the request for information set out in the attachment to this letter.
This letter and any subsequent correspondence will be placed on a public file. For efficiency, the file is currently being processed as a Telecom file; however, to the extent that the information is relevant to matters falling within the scope of the Broadcasting Act, the Commission will also consider the information pursuant to its authority under that Act. Should Pelmorex designate any information in its response as confidential pursuant to section 39 of the Telecommunications Act and section 30 and following of the CRTC Rules of Practice and Procedure (the Rules), it must provide its supporting reasons in accordance with section 32 of the Rules as well as an abridged version of the response for the public file. Note that, in accordance with its normal practices, the Commission may disclose or require the disclosure of information designated as confidential if its disclosure is in the public interest, i.e., where any specific direct harm likely to result from disclosure does not outweigh the public interest in isclosure.
In light of the immense public interest in understanding what happened, Commission staff expects Pelmorex to disclose information on the public record to the maximum extent possible.
Sincerely,
Original signed by
Ian Baggley for
Fiona Gilfillan
Executive Director
Telecommunications sector
c.c.: Noah Moser, CRTC, noah.moser@crtc.gc.ca
Michel Murray, CRTC, michel.murray@crtc.gc.ca
Simon Levasseur, CRTC, simon.levasseur@crtc.gc.ca
Attachment
Request for Information
Pelmorex is to provide a report on the impact on National Public Alerting System (NPAS) of the outage that began on 8 July 2022, including but not limited to:
- When and how Pelmorex was notified by Rogers that alerts from the National Public Alerting System (NPAS) were not being distributed by Rogers across its broadcasting and wireless facilities;
- to what extent Rogers explained the impact of the outage on broadcasting-based alerting and Wireless-based alerting;
- if applicable, a description of how the outage affected Pelmorex’s ability to operate the NAAD;
- to your knowledge, the impact of the outage on the ability of alert issuers to create alerts and last mile distributors’ (LMD) ability to receive and distribute alerts;
- how many alerts were impacted by the outage; and
- whether a capability to automatically detect if an LMD is disconnected from the NAAD could be implemented and, if not, whether there is a procedure in place for LMDs to notify the NAAD of a loss of connection.
- Date modified: