ASL – Service outage notification requirements (4 of 4)
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Video Transcript
Service outage notification requirements
The Commission requires all telecommunications service providers to provide notification of major service outages affecting the three service categories to the extent and in the manner set out in the decision. These requirements are summarized as follows.
Telecommunications service providers must notify the Commission, ISED, and relevant federal, provincial, and territorial emergency management offices of all major primary service outages within two hours. A major primary service outage is defined as a complete loss of a primary service that lasts a minimum of 30 minutes and results in either at least 600,000 user minutes affected or a community isolation event. The user minutes affected is calculated by multiplying the duration of an outage in minutes by the number of end-users affected. A community isolation event is the loss of primary services to a remote, isolated, or rural community.
Telecommunications service providers must notify relevant 9-1-1 call centres of all 9-1-1 service outages within 30 minutes of identifying the outage. They must also notify the Commission, ISED, and relevant federal, provincial, and territorial emergency management offices within two hours of identifying a 9-1-1 service outage that lasts a minimum of 30 minutes.
Similarly, wireless service providers must notify relevant federal, provincial, and territorial emergency management offices of all wireless public alerting service outages within 30 minutes of identifying the outage. They must also notify the Commission and ISED within two hours of identifying a wireless public alerting service outages that lasts a minimum of 30 minutes.
The telecommunications service providers mandated by the Commission to provide teletypewriter relay, Internet Protocol relay, or 9-8-8 service must notify the Commission and ISED of outages that only affect those services lasting a minimum of 30 minutes, regardless of the number of end-users affected. They must provide that notification within two hours of identifying the outage.
Telecommunications service providers must provide notification and regular updates about service outages to the Commission by email. They must also update the Commission by email when the affected services are fully restored. The Commission plans to establish an online reporting system to facilitate the outage notification process.
The Commission also requires telecommunications service providers to submit a detailed post-outage report to the Commission within 30 days of services being restored. The post-outage report must include details about the cause and impact of the service outage on affected end-users, including the users of accessibility services. The report must also describe the measures that the telecommunications service provider has implemented or plans to implement to address the cause of the outage to avoid a similar outage in the future. The Commission will share lessons learned with other telecommunications service providers so that they can take proactive measures and improve the reliability of their own services.
This decision establishes the notification and reporting requirements for service providers when they experience a major telecommunications service outage.
This video describes the outage notification and reporting requirements for service providers when they experience a major service outage.
Telecom Decision CRTC 2025-225
Consultation on notification and reporting about major telecom service outages
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