Bell reveals cause of 87-minute 911 outage across six Canadian provinces

Bell told the CRTC that a previously undetected software issue in its Next-Generation 911 network caused an 87-minute outage on September 17 affecting Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. The carrier said it was not a cyberattack, and engineers were alerted only about 24 minutes after traffic to 911 dropped.

• Outage began at 3:13 a.m. and lasted 87 minutes across six provinces
• Cause was a previously undetected software issue in the NG911 network, not a cyberattack
• Engineers were alerted about 24 minutes after 911 call traffic dropped
• Bell applied a permanent fix and added independent NG911 monitoring