911 issues caused by change to 10-digit dialing in New Brunswick: Bell Aliant
911 emergency calling in all three Maritime provinces has been fixed following service issues Tuesday morning.
The Nova Scotia RCMP first warned of the issue in a tweet just after 7 a.m.
An emergency alert was issued in the province, telling people to call their local police, fire and EHS services in the event of an emergency.
The New Brunswick RCMP, as well as police departments in Miramichi, Fredericton and Saint John, were also experiencing technical issues with 911.
The Miramichi Police Force said calls from landlines were not going through, while calls from cell phones were.
The P.E.I. RCMP 911 system was also affected by the outage.
During the outage, police departments provided alternate phone numbers residents could call.
Bell Aliant confirmed it was working to restore 911 service around 8:30 a.m.
About 20 minutes later, the company said that service was restored for Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
“The root cause was a software update introduced at approximately 6 a.m. in preparation for 10-digit dialling for New Brunswick, which triggered unexpected call processing failures to 911. All other types of calls were unaffected,” said Katie Hatfield, a senior manager of communications at Bell Aliant.
“Once we realized the issue, we worked to roll back the update to restore services as quickly as possible. We have adjusted our processes and safeguards to ensure that this type of issue will not happen again, including adjusting our test plans for future updates.”
Hatfield characterized the issue as “an isolated incident.”
Nova Scotia’s minister responsible for the Emergency Management Office (EMO), John Lohr, and the executive director of the Nova Scotia EMO, Paul Mason, took questions from journalists Tuesday afternoon.
“Today’s 911 outage was an event never before experienced in our province,” said Lohr.
Lohr said the province was first aware of the outage at about 7 a.m. and a provincial coordination system was activated. It took until about 8:08 a.m. for an emergency alert to go out.
“We knew 911 was down but it wasn’t down entirely across the province, so it took some time to determine where it was down. And 911 could still [be] reached through, I believe, some cell phone connections,” Lohr said.
Lohr said it took some time to determine where the outage was and to provide alternative emergency numbers and verify the phone numbers EMO gave out were working.
“Pooling together the provincial coordination centre, determining the scope of the problem and just double checking the numbers is what took that time,” Lohr said.
Lohr said the province is not aware of any incidents where someone needed to get through to 911 but couldn’t.
Mason pointed out how the interruption impacted customers in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and P.E.I.
“The 911 switch, which calls are routed on, is primarily located in Fredericton with a backup facility in Moncton,” Mason said. “That’s why the three provinces were impacted.”
It’s unclear how many people used the alternative emergency numbers provided Tuesday.
Mason and Lohr said data such as this will be provided during a debrief. Lohr said the province does an immediate debrief with partners such as Bell Aliant and other provincial EMOs whenever there are incidents like this.
ANOTHER ALERT
Late Tuesday afternoon, the same alert about 911 disruption issued Tuesday morning went out on some television carriers, including Bell.
Nova Scotia’s EMO confirmed there was no new disruption.
Provincial spokesperson Heather Fairbairn said no more alerts were issued since EMO advised Nova Scotians the 911 service had been restored shortly after 9 a.m.
Fairbairn said when an alert is issued, the message is pushed out to distributors such as television, cellular, etcetera.
“Any delays in receipt or broadcast of that message to their customers due to the particulars of their network and hardware configuration must be addressed by the particular provider experiencing the issue,” Fairbairn said.
CTV’s parent company is Bell Media.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Trend Line Anger, pessimism towards federal government reach six-year high: Nanos survey
Most Canadians in March reported feeling angry or pessimistic towards the federal government than at any point in the last six years, according to a survey by Nanos Research.
BREAKING 14 suspects arrested in grandparent scam targeting seniors across Canada: Ontario police
An interprovincial investigation into an 'emergency grandparents scam' that targeted seniors across Canada has led to the arrest of 14 suspects, Ontario Provincial Police say.
Motion to allow keffiyehs at Ontario legislature fails
A motion to reverse a ban on the keffiyeh within Queen’s Park failed to receive unanimous consent Thursday just moments after Ontario Premier Doug Ford reiterated his view that prohibiting the garment in the House is divisive.
B.C. child killer's lawyer walks out of review hearing
The lawyer representing child-killer Allan Schoenborn walked out of his client's annual review hearing Wednesday – abruptly ending proceedings marked by tense exchanges and several outbursts.
How to avoid the trap of becoming 'house poor'
The journey to home ownership can be exciting, but personal finance columnist Christopher Liew warns about the trappings of becoming 'house poor' -- where an overwhelming portion of your income is devoured by housing costs. Liew offers some practical strategies to maintain better financial health while owning a home.
'A living nightmare': Winnipeg woman sentenced following campaign of harassment against man after online date
A Winnipeg woman was sentenced to house arrest after a single date with a man she met online culminated in her harassing him for years, and spurred false allegations which resulted in the innocent man being arrested three times.
Juror dismissed in Trump hush money trial as prosecutors ask for former president to face contempt
Prosecutors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump asked Thursday for the former president to be held in contempt and fined because of seven social media posts that they said violated a judge's gag order barring him from attacking witnesses.
Why drivers in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada will see a gas price spike, and other Canadians won't
Drivers in Eastern Canada face a big increase in gas prices because of various factors, especially the higher cost of the summer blend, industry analysts say.
It's the biggest election in history. Here's why few Indians in Canada will take part
In the Indian general election that gets underway on Friday, almost a billion people are eligible to vote, but a vast majority of the overseas Indian community in Canada won't be casting a ballot.