Bell MTS outage lasts for days, affects 911

A widespread Bell MTS outage this week struck a Winnipeg hospital and an unknown number of Manitobans who couldn’t call 911 because their landline and internet service was down for days.

The Grace Hospital website said Friday it was still having problems with its phone lines.

“We’re currently experiencing intermittent phone service issues at Grace Hospital. We cannot accept inbound calls in some instances. Bell MTS is aware and is working to restore service as quickly as possible.”

A Bell MTS spokesman said Friday “the vast majority of customers” had phone service restored and they’re “down to a few handful” to be reconnected following the outage that began Tuesday.

Late Friday, while that notice was still posted, a Winnipeg Regional Health Authority spokesperson said the hospital’s phone system had been restored.

The spokesperson said while the phones were malfunctioning “contingency plans were enacted to protect patient safety and mitigate workflow disruptions.”

“We thank front-line staff for maintaining appropriate levels of care throughout the disruption.”

Innovation and New Technology Minister Mike Moroz said Bell MTS notified the government about the outage earlier this week, and he’s not happy about it.

“This is unacceptable and we are deeply concerned when 911 service is interrupted for anyone and we are monitoring the situation closely,” Moroz said in a statement.

“Manitobans need to be able to contact emergency services, and we need this situation to be resolved urgently.”

Moroz said he expects Bell MTS to “be transparent and accountable.”

“We will continue to pressure the federal government on the importance of reliable coverage and to hold providers to account to prevent incidents like this from occurring.”

Mirabella Salem, a spokesperson for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, said it has “mandatory reporting rules for major outages.”

She said Bell MTS sent the federal authority a notice about the outage Tuesday.

“We are monitoring the situation and actively engaging with Bell,” Salem said in a statement.

David Marcille, Bell’s senior manager of media relations based in Montreal, said in a statement an unknown number of lines went down “following a commercial power outage at a central network facility” early Tuesday. He said it included landline phone, internet and TV services in both west Winnipeg and in areas outside the city.

Marcille said that by Wednesday most services had been “fully restored,” but about 500 customers who use landlines were still affected at that time because of “localized equipment damage.”

But Marcille said on Friday that while the vast majority of their clients were back online, some customers were still without service. He asked them to contact Bell MTS directly.

“We thank our customers for their patience.”

A St. James resident, who wanted to remain unnamed, said her internet went down first on Tuesday followed by her landline a few hours later. She said Friday her phone will only allow incoming calls.

“What about emergency calls?” the woman said. “It’s not just us, we have friends who also have the same problem.

“When we contact Bell, it is a very nonchalant attitude. They really take us for granted.”

A Charleswood resident, who didn’t want to be named, said he had heard the outage was not contained to Winnipeg, but as far away as Gimli and Carberry. The resident said he doesn’t understand why there was no notice about the outage on the Bell MTS website on Tuesday and Wednesday.

“MTS has sat silent about this,” he said. “I’m so disappointed MTS didn’t put this out to people. There are so many safety issues for old people. How are you going to call for an ambulance if your phone isn’t working?”

“How are you going to call for an ambulance if your phone isn’t working?”

The man said it reminded him of another outage last year in which an Interlake man died of a heart attack while his family and friends tried in vain to reach 911 for 90 minutes while they performed CPR — not realizing their Telus service was not working. It didn’t operate normally for two days. Dean Switzer, 55, died on March 23, 2025.

In a report to the CRTC, Telus blamed the outage on “an equipment failure on the Bell facilities, that are part of the 911 network that Telus interconnects with Bell to send calls” and that it “does not know the reason” for the failure. Bell responded saying only Telus, and no other cellphone carrier, was affected by an outage to its 911 calls, after one of its two gateways for emergency calls did a four-minute reset.

Switzer’s family has filed a lawsuit against Telus.

On Thursday, the Bell MTS website posted an announcement that said: “some customers in Manitoba may be experiencing a service interruption. We are working to restore service as quickly as possible.” The notice was no longer on the website Friday.

Jenny Davis, who works at St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church in Charleswood, said people couldn’t get through on Tuesday and into Wednesday to place orders for takeout food for the first night of its Friday night fundraiser.

Davis said for those who did get through to place an order online, the church didn’t know who had made the order, only that the caller had been charged for the food.

“I wasn’t able to call out,” Davis said. “I got some people I know to call me, but then they didn’t go through. This was happening all day (on Tuesday).

“MTS said they were coming out to fix it, but then they called and said they were cancelling it because it was an area-wide issue instead.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca