Bell under fire after 911 outage

Bell Canada — Manitoba’s 911 service provider — is facing questions about reliability and redundancy measures after an hours-long outage outside Winnipeg, caused by a severed fibre optic cable, prevented dozens of calls from getting through Wednesday.

Bell spokeswoman Elise von Scheel said backup systems that reroute 911 calls when an outage occurs due to equipment damage also experienced “issues” after a third party cut the cable during construction “near Winnipeg.”

“Manitoba’s 911 system relies on legacy architecture that does not support the failsafes that newer systems have, which is why Bell is in the process of upgrading the ecosystem to next generation 911,” von Scheel wrote in an email.

“All Manitoba public safety answering points are planned to be migrated to the new system by the end of 2026. Migration to NG911 is the fastest and most effective remediation to prevent instances like this in the future.”

Describing recurring 911 outages as unacceptable, Premier Wab Kinew said he raised the matter with Prime Minister Mark Carney in Charlottetown on Thursday, while Canada’s first ministers met to discuss U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade threats.

“I was very reassured by the prime minister’s equally strong response,” Kinew told reporters. “He committed to calling the CEOs of the telecoms and addressing the issue. We’ll continue working with the federal government both at that level, the ministerial level, and then working with the big phone companies directly. God knows they’re certainly charging us enough money on our phone bills.”

Bell did not identify the third party who cut the cable, nor the precise location. The telecom is required to provide a report to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

Mark Goldberg, a telecommunications consultant and analyst based in the Toronto area, said that while details were limited and he was not familiar with the architecture of Manitoba’s 911 network, it was unusual for a single fibre cut to create such an outage.

“Network backbones are generally architected with dual routes or triple routes so that you don’t have that kind of outage caused by a single cut,” he said.

The incident disrupted 911 calls that would normally be routed to the public safety answering point in Brandon, which handles calls for police, fire and ambulance services outside Winnipeg. It is one of two primary PSAPs in Manitoba. The other, in Winnipeg, was not affected.

“God knows they’re certainly charging us enough money on our phone bills.”

Nearly 90 calls were not routed to Brandon’s public safety communications centre during the outage, said Robert Stewart, who oversees the facility.

The centre uses RapidSOS software, which provides phone numbers and locations for calls from cellphones in real time, even when calls do not come through.

RapidSOS provided information for about half of the calls that didn’t get through, said Stewart, the City of Brandon’s director of public safety communications. The remaining calls, for which information wasn’t available, were potentially made from a land line.

Manitoba Innovation and New Technology Minister Mike Moroz’s office was in contact with Bell on Thursday.

“We did express the concerns of rural Manitobans and like them, we are fed up with these outages,” said Caedmon Malowany, a spokesman for Moroz. “We want further action on backup systems and expect infrastructure that is reliable.”

“911 is what everybody defaults to. We need it to work.”

Staff from Moroz’s office also spoke to federal Industry Minister Mélanie Joly’s office to express concerns, Malowany said. Telecoms are federally regulated.

Municipal leaders echoed Moroz’s concerns.

“We do hope they have some options to bring to the table on how to deal with redundancies or communicate clearer and faster,” Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett said of Bell.

“I’m grateful we were able to manage with some of these systems that were in place because 911 is what everybody defaults to. We need it to work.”

Emergency services and municipalities scrambled to notify residents of the outage, which began at about 1 p.m. Bell announced shortly after 4 p.m. service had resumed.

Fawcett commended Brandon’s public safety employees for their work under pressure.

“We continued to communicate with all our other agencies throughout the province, including the (provincial government), without knowing really how long it was going to be down,” Fawcett said. “We were managing, and the team did a great job on that.”

Winkler Mayor Henry Siemens was thankful the outage didn’t last longer.

“Obviously, (it was) an inconvenience, but we have a really good emergency services crew, a really good administrative crew,” he said. “We were able to quickly respond, quickly move forward… and we were able to be OK and respond to calls still.”

Siemens was concerned by the outage.

“I would anticipate this is being looked at very closely and that this will be looked at to try to build in some redundancies,” he said.

In a statement, the Association of Manitoba Municipalities said it is “deeply concerned” by recurring 911 outages in Manitoba.

More than 50 callers couldn’t get through to 911 during a Bell MTS service outage April 28. The family of Fisher Branch resident Dean Switzer, 55, unaware their Telus service was not working, was unable to get through to 911 when he suffered a fatal heart attack in March 2025.

“Manitobans deserve reliable, modernized emergency communications that protect public safety, particularly as widespread wildfires and overland flooding continue to place communities across the province at heightened risk,” said the AMM, which represents Manitoba’s 137 incorporated municipalities.

The organization has advocated for a co-ordinated working group to ensure a seamless transition to next generation 911.

“It is critical that this work be prioritized to strengthen Manitoba’s emergency response system,” the AMM said.

The CRTC directed all of Canada’s telecoms to update their networks from analog to digital for next generation 911 voice services by March 31, 2027.

The transition will allow for real-time text messaging in the future. Canadians, for example, could send videos of a collision or make medical information available to first responders, with the aim of safer, faster and more informed emergency responses.

A Facebook post by Bell MTS said the fibre cable cut also led to wireless issues for some customers near the University of Manitoba.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority said contingency plans were enacted and patient care continued while its Access Fort Garry site on Plaza Drive, near Pembina Highway, had phone, internet and fax disruptions.

Winnipeg resident Fraser Cook said he couldn’t find an explanation on the WRHA’s website or alternate forms of contact after he tried to call the facility Wednesday.

“It would just beep and say, ‘the customer is unavailable,’” he said.

People, such as seniors, who are unable to visit the Access site in person may rely on telephone contact, Cook said.

— with files from Carol Sanders

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca