By Greg O’Brien
ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY, millions of Canadians are working from home, or sadly just staying home after their job was placed on indefinite hold. Students don’t know when they will go back to class and seniors are being told going for groceries is dangerous because of the deadly Covid-19.
Politicians of all stripe are telling us to stay home – a call which most of us are thankfully heeding – and one which we will need to obey for some weeks to come to try and slow the spread of the virus.
We’ve hunkered down at home with our families, but also our phones, laptops, tablets and TVs as we communicate with our loved ones, try to be as productive as we can if we’re now working remotely and then relax with a TV series or movie – not necessarily in that order – and perhaps all at the same time, whatever the time of day.
According to Canada’s network service providers – and we’ve chatted with all of the big ones and some of the smaller ones, traffic has surged on wireless and wired networks as they are being stress-tested as never before. Traffic bottlenecks which weren’t known bottlenecks before last week are being discovered because of that increased traffic – and repaired at breakneck pace. So far, Canada’s networks have proven their strength.
While there have been some reports of dropped calls and video conference meetings that flame out due to what might be network congestion (but could be other things, too) the network operators are working together to make sure Canadians are connected, informed and entertained with little to no interruption.
Carriers have promised not to cut anyone off who can’t pay their bill during this crisis, data overage charges for home internet have been waived, and extra charges for wireless customers roaming while stuck abroad have been waived as well. Planned rate increases have also been set aside and a great number of TV channels have been made available for free, as we’ve reported.
The hard work being done by the folks working on air can not be understated as they go above and beyond to make sure we are informed with updates that change seemingly by the moment. Check out CP24 anchor Nick Dixon anchoring his newscast from the basement of his home (photo from his Instagram account). The excellent, difficult, necessary, work being done by CBC, CTV, Corus, Citytv, 
CHCH and others have all been covered so far by Cartt.ca.
As for immediate broadband and wireless network concerns, while the companies report higher traffic, they are seeing resilience in their performance through the early part of the crisis.
“We are in unprecedented times that call for all of us to work together to limit the impact of Covid-19 in our communities. As millions of people are at home doing their part to self-isolate and practice social distancing, our dedicated people are out there working around the clock to keep Canadians connected. We are seeing an increase in home internet usage and voice calls, and customers may see a change in their experience right now as our engineers and field techs continue to add capacity and manage traffic in real-time,” says a statement from Rogers.
“We are seeing usage increases across our networks. Home Internet usage is up the most – up to 60% higher than usual during the day as people work remotely and stream more, up to 20% higher than usual at night,” said a Bell Canada spokesperson.
Dropped wireless calls have apparently been due to capacity issues between carriers, which have been and continue to be mitigated as they work together to increase inter-carrier capacity. “Landline voice is in good shape but customers may encounter brief congestion when we have daytime surges in usage. We’ll see continued improvement as we add capacity,” according to Bell’s spokesperson.
“TV viewing is also up significantly. At Bell Media, local news viewership is up about 40%, national news by 73%.” This is a trend across all news channels in Canada. We’ll have more to say on this in the coming days.
Telus reports seeing no widespread connectivity issues while its techs actively add capacity and manage the networks by redirecting load, and working with other telecoms to ensure it can handle the increased volume. Ninety percent of its employees are now working from home as staff still need to be available in some stores and some technicians have to be on the road.
Those techs must protect themselves as never before. Protocols for repair visits are different now. For example, if an Eastlink tech has to visit a customer’s home (and all efforts are made to solve problems remotely first), they are being told to talk outside the home and keep a safe social distance in what they have termed a “driveway assessment”. If they still must enter a home, they are asking customers to remain two metres away at all times.
Telus technicians are equipped with personal protection equipment including masks, gloves, and booties, and have been trained on stringent sanitization requirements for techs personally as well as any needed equipment. If a customer is under quarantine, appointments are rescheduled. All are taking similar safety precautions.
Carriers are seeing much more volume on 1-800 numbers, too. “Given the unprecedented volume of mass-calling events and new 1-800 numbers being set up through government agencies to help Canadians through the crisis, we are also working with all operators to address the increased congestion between networks and increase the capacity of the interconnection facilities,” said the Telus statement.
“Our networks and services, including Internet and mobility, have been performing well despite increases in usage and volume.”
As Canada’s largest health IT provider, Telus has also expanded its virtual healthcare capabilities through Babylon by Telus Health and the company also offers the bilingual Akira virtual care app, which is available to more than 500,000 Canadians and their families through their employers. Demand has surged for these services, reports the company, which is also training more doctors and practitioners on the apps, which provide the distance which will keep everyone safer.
Shaw reports it has experienced a decrease in mobile data usage as people are staying home and connecting via Wi-Fi to their home internet, but a spike in wireless voice calls. Its spokesperson noted in an email: “Notwithstanding any unforeseen circumstances, we are confident we are in an excellent position to manage significant network usage increases (wired or wireless), especially within our major markets where we expect the largest increases to occur.”
“Shaw leads all North American cable operators in broadband capacity thanks to a series of innovative ‘Mid Split’ network upgrades that we have completed in all of our major markets. In addition to industry leading upload capacity, this upgrade gives us the ability to deploy new download capacity virtually overnight if needed.”
It’s also worth noting some Canadian businesses have faced early challenges if they rely upon secure virtual private networks (rather than an open home internet connection) and other tools to drive remote working, because some of those tools may have been optimized for far fewer users than what is all of a sudden needed, causing problems that aren’t related to the telecom networks.
Instead of dozens on a VPN, it may be hundreds. Or instead of hundreds, it may be thousands. Those corporations will have to adjust.
One other important issue which has yet to surface in Canada is the amount of space video streamers, especially Netflix, take up on networks and whether it can or will be decreased. It and others, like Amazon and Facebook, have responded to the call of European Union officials to lower their bit rates to help network congestion there, but that has not happened in North America yet that we know of. Cartt.ca will have more on this in the coming days because it’s a bit more complicated than just decreasing the flow from HD to SD.
So far though, Canada’s telecom networks, thanks to the work of their many thousands of employees, are weathering the Covid-19 crisis well.
