OTTAWA – The operator of the country’s emergency alert system is suggesting possibly developing “protocols and procedures” for distributors to inform it about any disruptions to the delivery of alerts.
In a Wednesday response to the CRTC’s request for more information about the Rogers network outage in July, Pelmorex said such measures could enable it to quickly notify government issuers of the alert about the problem. Pelmorex was asked by the regulator to provide comment earlier this month.
The company also suggested that it could potentially work with trade associations representing the broadcasters of the alert — including Rogers in this case — to “establish agreements” or memoranda of understanding through which the broadcasters “would commit to providing notification when they become aware of any alert distribution issue.” (Pelmorex said it first heard of the Rogers outage through media reports and personal distruptions and had to contact Rogers on the morning of the outage.)
Currently, such notification of issues is done on an ad hoc voluntary basis — though Pelmorex said there is a process in which it can communicate with distributors of alerts and distributors can reach it on a 24/7 support team line.
“There is no procedure in place for [alert distributors] to notify Pelmorex if they lose a connection” to the alert system, known as the National Alert Aggregation and Dissemination system, the company said. The distributors “are not required to contact or register with Pelmorex to access the NAAD System and there is no formal or administrative relationship between Pelmorex and many [last mile distributors].”
The company said the NAAD system was not impacted by the Rogers outage because the company would “never be reliant on a single internet service provider to ensure service.”
In addressing a question from the CRTC about whether a capability could be developed to automatically detect if alert distributors are disconnected from the NAAD, Pelmorex said such a capability “would require technical changes” by both the company and distributors.
“It is important to reiterate that Rogers’ cell broadcast system remained connected to the NAAD System throughout the service outage, so such a capability would fall short of indicating whether alerts would or would not reach Canadians,” Pelmorex said.
The weather information and media company said that between 4 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. on the day of the outage on July 8, it processed 42 emergency alert messages in Saskatchewan. Rogers said that the outage would prevent it from delivering any emergency alerts to wireless devices connected to the Rogers network, according to Pelmorex.
