The CRTC has asked Telus via a June 5 letter to provide a public summary of a 911 service outage Telus experienced from March 22-24 this year that impacted wireless 911 calls trying to connect to the public safety answering point (PSAP) in Brandon, Manitoba.
The commission initially requested information regarding the outage from Telus in an April 11 letter asking for weekly progress reports on the Vancouver-based telecom’s investigation of the cause of the outage, steps taken to resolve the outage, the impact of the outage, and plans put in place to prevent similar outages in the future.
Telus obligingly provided weekly reports that were redacted in places, arguing in part that some of the technical details, if made public, could provide a roadmap for bad actors to attack Canadian 911 networks.
In its follow-up letter last week, the CRTC has requested Telus provide a public summary, without redactions, that explains: the timeline of the outage, including when the outage began, when Telus became aware of it and took actions while the outage was ongoing, and when the outage ended; the cause of the outage, including any network, process or system issues that contributed to or prolonged the outage; the reason why the outage lasted more than 36 hours; and the mitigating strategies Telus has implemented to prevent similar outages in future.
As for the information Telus previously filed in confidence due to the deemed risk of disclosing technical details, the CRTC is asking Telus to provide on the public record a complete list of the types of information Telus submitted in confidence as part of its reports, including where such information is located in each of its four post-incident reports, and a detailed rationale for filing this information in confidence, including an explanation of the potential risks to Telus and its 911 operations if the information were to be disclosed.
Telus has until June 16 to provide the requested information in a report that must be filed on the public record with no redactions.
