Search

Telecom - Commission Letter addressed to Philippe Gauvin (Bell Canada)

Ottawa, 15 December 2022

Our reference: 8665-C12-201507008

BY EMAIL

Philippe Gauvin
Assistant General Counsel 
Bell Canada
Floor 19
160 Elgin Street
Ottawa, Ontario, K2P 2C4
bell.regulatory@bell.ca

RE: Follow-up to Outage Report filed 30 March 2022

As per Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2016-165, Footnote1 the Commission directed 9-1-1 network providers, including Bell Canada (Bell) to, among other things, file an annual report on 9-1-1 network outages that cause 9-1-1 service outages. Footnote2

Commission staff requires additional information in relation to the report filed in March 2022. Accordingly, Bell is to provide comprehensive answers to the questions in the attachment, including rationale and any supporting information, by 13 January 2023.

This letter and any subsequent correspondence will be placed on the public record. Should Bell 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.

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 all 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

Michel Murray

Director, Dispute Resolution & Regulatory Implementation
Telecommunications Sector

c.c.:   Alex Pittman, CRTC, 873-354-6342, alexander.pittman@crtc.gc.ca

Attach. (1)

Questions for Bell Canada

Bell Canada’s annual 9-1-1 networks outage report for the year 2021 indicated, among other things, that on 30 August 2021 an equipment failure took 2 lines carrying 9-1-1 calls to the relevant PSAP out of service for over 3 hours.

  1. How long did it take for Bell to detect this outage?
  2. How was the outage detected?  Indicate which network monitoring practices or processes, if any, assisted in detecting the outage.
  3. How long did it take for the affected lines to be taken out of service and to install the necessary components to restore service? Indicate in detail how 9-1-1 calls were affected before and after the affected lines were busied out, and when calls were not delivered.
  4. What was the expected total volume of 9-1-1 calls within the affected area for that day? 
  5. The report indicates that the missed 9-1-1 call details were provided to the affected PSAP.  Confirm whether this is the case for all of the missed calls and if not, explain for how many calls this was the case and why.
  6. What remedial actions were taken to mitigate any future occurrence or impacts of similar outages at this and other locations (e.g. changes to equipment used, provisions to make replacement equipment more readily available, improvements to network monitoring, etc.)?
Date modified: