Bell accuses Telus of misleading CRTC regarding Manitoba outage

BCE Inc. is alleging that Telus Corp. is misleading the CRTC on details about a March service outage in the Brandon region of Manitoba, during which a man died after his family was unable to make 911 calls to first responders. Both telecom providers responded to requests for information (RFIs) with the commission to explain what happened. Bell alleges its western counterpart tried to shift the blame for the outage. “In a recent RFI response, Telus misleadingly portrays a recent 911 outage for its customers in Manitoba as being due to an equipment failure on Bell facilities, claiming this disrupted eight Bell network circuits leased by Telus,” assistant general counsel Philippe Gauvin writes to the regulator. “As Telus knows, that explanation is inaccurate and unsupported by the facts,” Bell alleges. Gauvin goes on to point out that only Telus experienced the outage; no other carrier had problems. The network circuits were functioning, he adds, and the issue was resolved by Telus itself through actions on its side of the demarcation point. Bell says it contacted Telus on June 19 asking for the record to be corrected but alleges no action was forthcoming on the western telecom’s part. On June 27, the eastern company sent its RFI to the CRTC with its version of events. According to Bell, the Brandon, Man. Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) contacted it at 6:30 a.m. central time on March 24 to report that Telus customers were unable to make calls. The PSAP had notified Telus of the outage at 2:06 a.m. that day. At 7:15 a.m. Bell sent Telus a trouble ticket advising that service was out on the 911 network. Telus sent its own trouble ticket at 8:15 a.m. “This directly contradicts Telus’ indication that it was first made aware of an issue at 11:00 ,” Gauvin continued. “It is also indicative that some alarms, monitoring and/or training can likely be improved.” During a teleconference at 11 a.m. central, Telus requested that Bell reset its trunk lines, according to the Bell filing. The company did but service was not restored to Telus customers. Telus then took action and service was returned, Bell alleged. “Since the disruption, Telus has been focused on working with Bell to prevent another disruption of this nature. The details of Bell’s filing largely align with Telus’ previous reports, acknowledging the initial network disruption originated on Bell’s network,” Telus said in a statement to The Wire Report. “There is no evidence to suggest our 911 services would have been disrupted had the initial Bell outage not taken place, and action was required by both Bell and Telus to bring Telus’ 911 connectivity back online, as it was the sequencing of the reset that fully restored service. We have been transparent about the process failure on our side, acknowledging that our outage notification procedures with Bell were not properly followed.” The company said it has taken the necessary steps to enhance its network resilience and strengthened its internal processes to prevent a similar occurrence in the future. ppark@thewirereport.ca

Bell accuses Telus of misleading CRTC regarding Manitoba outage

Telecom |
By Paul Park
| July 14, 2025

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Bell accuses Telus of misleading CRTC regarding Manitoba outage

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