Bell network problem behind 90-minute overnight 911 outage in Manitoba, five other provinces

A 911 outage that lasted about 90 minutes in Manitoba and other provinces Thursday morning was caused by a problem with Bell’s next-generation network amid concerns about recurring disruptions.

It’s not yet known how many Manitobans were unable to get through to 911 after the outage was detected at 2:13 a.m. Service was restored at 3:40 a.m., Bell spokeswoman Elise von Scheel said.

“We continue to investigate the root cause of the issue,” she wrote in an email.

A backup system was used during the disruption. Von Scheel said the “vast majority” of calls from Bell customers were immediately picked up by software and rerouted to 911 communications centres, or public safety answering points.

Bell is Manitoba’s 911 service operator. The outage also affected the telecom’s 911 services in Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.

Winnipeg police used social media to advise people to call the service’s non-emergency line during the outage.

A further review by the service’s communications centre determined 911 calls were received during the outage, police said. Staff and Bell are investigating whether any calls failed to get through.

“When 911 is down, you have the non-emergency line and you have people in dispatch who are qualified and trained to be able to step up and be able to take calls for service and monitor things as they come in,” police spokesman Const. Pat Saydak said earlier.

Manitoba has two primary 911 communications centres — one in Winnipeg and the other in Brandon.

Manitoba RCMP’s operational communications centre was not affected by the outage, spokeswoman Michelle Lissel said.

Von Scheel said Bell is providing information about the network issue to public safety answering points, applicable governments and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the industry regulator.

CRTC spokeswoman Mirabella Salem said Bell is required to provide a post-outage report within 14 days.

She said the report must detail the causes, the steps taken to resolve the outage, how emergency and accessibility services were specifically affected and plans to prevent similar outages in the future.

The outage within Bell’s network affected competing telecoms. Telus said its investigation found the issue was resolved around 4:30 a.m. across the impacted regions.

Rogers, which deferred comment to Bell, has a system designed to reroute its customers’ 911 calls to a third-party answering point when a 911 network or connection fails.

The interruption occurred less than two months after a severed fibre optic cable at a construction site led to an hours-long outage in all of Manitoba except Winnipeg, prompting calls for greater reliability and redundancy measures.

Bell said a third party was responsible for the cut. The company’s backup systems that reroute 911 calls did not work in the July 22 incident.

Nearly 90 calls did not get through to 911, the telecom later told the CRTC. Premier Wab Kinew raised concerns with Prime Minister Mark Carney afterward.

At the time, Bell said next-generation 911 will be more reliable than the “legacy architecture” Manitoba’s 911 system relies on.

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

In August, Kinew said he told Bell president and CEO Mirko Bibic that a 911 outage is “unacceptable.”

More than 50 callers were unable to access 911 services during a Bell outage April 28. In March 2025, relatives of Fisher Branch man, unaware their Telus service was not working, were unable to get through to 911 when he suffered a fatal heart attack.

The Association of Manitoba Municipalities has said it is “deeply concerned” about recurring 911 outages. The organization, which represents represents Manitoba’s 137 incorporated municipalities, advocated for a co-ordinated working group to ensure a seamless transition to next-generation 911.

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca