By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – The CRTC has formally launched Wednesday its proceeding on a network outage notification framework, and in the meantime has put in place a temporary order for all Canadian carriers to report major service outages within two hours of them becoming aware of it.
The new order, which takes effect March 8, also requires that the carriers file a “comprehensive” report to the regulator within 14 days following the outage.
The interim order narrowly defines an outage as ones that affect the 9-1-1 network, critical infrastructure, major transport facilities, a carrier with more than 100,000 subscribers affected for more than one hour, and subscribers in an area with the affected carrier being the sole provider.
The temporary order will be in place until a proceeding on a long-term framework has concluded.
As such, the CRTC is separately opening a comment period to make as a condition of licence the requirement that the carriers notify the CRTC, Innovation Canada, and “other relevant authorities” of such outages and to submit a post-outage report to the commission. It is seeking submissions on the nature and scope of permanent notification and reporting requirements.
Comments are due March 24.
“Timely notification of a major service outage would enable the Commission and relevant authorities to coordinate efforts to reduce the impact of the outage, such as informing the public about the outage and the measures individuals may take to reduce its impact,” the CRTC said Wednesday. “In addition, the provision of reports containing post-mortem analyses of the root causes of these outages would help the Commission and relevant authorities to devise regulatory measures or best practices that may be required to mitigate the impact and likelihood of future outages.”
The proposal is a broader and more permanent take on existing notification measures taken more recently, which saw the large telecoms agree to support each other in cases of major outages. The CRTC is effectively proposing to expand those requirements to all carriers and will seek to define “major service outages.”
“This proceeding will help formalize the service outage notification format and procedures, including who will be notified and when,” the regulator said.
This is the first part of a multi-stage process, as the regulator added it will initiate “additional public proceedings to address network resiliency in broader terms.
“Those proceedings may deal with issues including network resiliency principles, emergency services (9-1-1), public alerting, consumer communication, consumer compensation, accessibility, technical measures, and the imposition of administrative monetary penalties,” it said.
The regulator pointed to various service outages in previous years, including from tropical storm Fiona in Atlantic Canada last year, forest fires in western provinces the year before, and the freshest, most disruptive one, Rogers’s outage last summer that knocked out services for millions of Canadians (Rogers was criticized for a delay in reporting the outage). The CRTC said “in many cases” it had learned of outages first from news reports or complaints from Canadians.
The Rogers outage forced Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne to gather the large telecommunications companies and the Canadian Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee – a voluntary work group bringing stakeholders together – to hammer out ways to prevent this. The result is the large telecoms have agreed to sign deals that would see the carriers assist each other, including allowing their customers to roam on the other’s network.
“The Commission considers that more must be done to improve the reliability and resiliency of telecommunications networks to ensure that all Canadians can count on their telecommunications services when they need them,” the CRTC said Wednesday. “Building on actions taken by ISED and CSTAC, the Commission is enhancing the existing regulatory requirements and developing a regulatory framework to improve the reliability and resiliency of telecommunications networks through a consultation process.”
The CRTC said it will seek out help from third-party experts to determine what further regulatory action is needed, including from CSTAC. The regulator, in collaboration with ISED, will also commission an expert report “on the regulatory measures employed by international communications regulators that are applied” to service providers “in order to make telecommunications networks more reliable and resilient against vulnerabilities and threats that may lead to a service outage.”
Cartt reported in November that ISED has already asked for bids on a contract to examine those international experiences.
But the existing apparatus to deal with these network issues have left some large telecom executives pondering the utility of the CRTC having its own proceeding on the matter and cautioned the regulator to not go so far as to inadvertently impact network deployments.
The regulator acknowledged Wednesday the efforts of CSTAC but said its notification requirement would “complement” those previous efforts. It also noted that the notification requirement should not be complicated or onerous, even for small carriers, because teams handling reporting of the outage “can be expected to be fully engaged in the service restoration process at the time of the outage.”
Screenshot of CRTC chair Vicky Eatrides.
