Telecom - Commission Letter addressed to Various Parties
Ottawa, 28 September 2022
Our reference: 8000-C12-201909780
BY EMAIL
Philippe Gauvin
Assistant General Counsel
Bell Canada
Floor 19
160 Elgin St.
Ottawa, Ontario K2P 2C4
bell.regulatory@bell.ca
Marielle Wilson
Vice President Regulatory
Bragg Communications Incorporated (Eastlink)
6080 Young Street
Suite 801,
Halifax, NS, B3K 5M3
regulatory.Matters@corp.eastlink.ca
Mr. Howard Slawner
Vice President - Regulatory Telecom
Rogers Communications Canada Inc.
350 Bloor Street East
Toronto, Ontario M4W 0A1
regulatory@rci.rogers.com
Stephen Schmidt
Vice-President Telecom Policy & Chief Regulatory Legal Counsel
Telus Communications Inc.
Floor 5
215 Slater St.
Ottawa, Ontario, K1P 0A6
Regulatory.affairs@telus.com
Subject: Request for Information regarding major telecommunications service disruptions resulting from hurricane Fiona
From 24 September to 25 September 2022 hurricane Fiona swept through the Atlantic region. News reports have been highlighting significant damage to infrastructure in the region caused by the hurricane, including loss of power and telecommunications services. In exercising its powers and performing its duties under the Telecommunications Act, the Commission must implement the Canadian telecommunications policy objectives set out in section 7 of that Act, including to render reliable and affordable telecommunications services of high quality accessible to Canadians in both urban and rural areas in all regions of Canada, as well as to respond to the economic and social requirements of users of telecommunications services.
Commission staff wishes to have a better understanding on the status of any outages of telecommunications services due to hurricane Fiona.
Accordingly, Commission staff requests the following information by 7 October 2022.
Please provide comprehensive answers, including rationale and any supporting information.
- Provide, by province, for each day between 24 September 2022 and 25 September 2022, a high-level estimate of the number of customers affected by service outages of 24 hours or more caused by the hurricane, for each of phone, mobile wireless, and Internet access services.
- The status to date of any outages and all relevant timelines, including details of actions taken so far.
- The impact on federal, provincial, territorial and municipal government services.
- The specific impact on emergency services including wireless public alerting and
9-1-1 and details of when access to emergency services was/will be fully restored. - Indicate the steps taken to date and plans to address any remaining service outages across the affected region.
- Describe the measures taken to inform your customers, the public and relevant local authorities of the situation affecting your network and recovery efforts.
- Describe measures taken to request and/or provide mutual aid from and to other carriers and the outcomes of such measures including emergency roaming.
- Describe any measures taken to improve network resiliency and recovery prior to this event and any lessons learned or measures planned for the future due to this event.
This letter and any subsequent correspondence will be placed on the public record. Should the companies designate any information in its response as confidential pursuant to section 39 of the Telecommunications Act, an abridged version of the response must be provided for the public record. 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, that is, where the specific direct harm does not outweigh the public interest in disclosure. Further Commission staff expects the companies to disclose information on the public record to the maximum extent possible.
Where a document is to be filed or served by a specific date, the document must be actually received, not merely sent, by that date.
The Commission requires the response or other documents to be submitted electronically by using the secured service “My CRTC Account” (Partner Log In or GCKey) and filling the “Telecom Cover page” located on this web page.
Sincerely,
Original signed by Étienne Robelin for
Michel Murray
Director, Dispute Resolution & Regulatory Implementation
Telecommunications Sector
c.c: Christine Brock, CRTC, 873-353-5852, christine.brock@crtc.gc.ca
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