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