Several police services across Canada reported that their 911 lines were down Thursday morning, though the outages appeared to be resolved within an hour or two in many cases.
Police services including those in Toronto, Ottawa, London, Ont. and Waterloo, Ont., reported the disruptions on social media, urging residents to call non-emergency lines in case of an emergency.
“Earlier this morning, Bell experienced an issue with its core next generation (NG) 9-1-1 network at approximately 3:13 a.m. ET and service was restored at 4:40 a.m. ET, Bell said in a statement to CityNews. “The vast majority of calls coming from Bell customers were immediately picked up by the “SafetyNet” system and rerouted to the destination Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs).”
“We are investigating the root cause of the issue.”
Ontario Provincial Police also said they were alerted to intermittent 911 outages in parts of the province, while the Surete du Quebec said technical issues were affecting the transfer of certain 911 calls.
Many said the issue was resolved by about 7:30 a.m. ET.
The OPP said that while the 911 system has been mostly restored, “it is possible that intermittent disruptions may still exist.”
“If you are unable to reach the OPP by dialing 911, please call the OPP non-emergency line at 1-888-310-1122. Do not call 911 to test the system or confirm if it works for you,” the Ontario police force said in an updated statement.
A spokesperson for Montreal police says the outage affected the telephone carrier responsible for 911. Even if calls came in, the spokesperson says, there was a possibility they would be transferred to police services elsewhere in the country.
Further east, the Nova Scotia government says intermittent 911 outages may affect some cellphone and VoIP users, while police in Saint John, N.B., say 911 is down on cellphones but still available from landlines.
“There are reports that some cellular carriers are having difficulty connecting to 911 across Canada,” the Nova Scotia government said in a statement.
“The province is working to understand the full extent of the service disruption. The issue appears to be related to telecommunications carrier networks and is not a problem with the provincial 911 system itself.”
In July, rural communities in Winnipeg experienced outages with 911 for several hours.
Bell Canada said in a statement at the time that the July outage was caused by a fibre cable cut by a third party doing construction, saying they use backup systems to reroute 911 calls if an outage occurs; however, in this rare case, the backup system was also experiencing issues.
