Software Bug Caused 87-Minute 911 Outage Across Six Canadian Provinces, Bell Reports
Bell Canada told the CRTC that a latent software bug in its Next Generation 911 system caused an outage on September 17, 2026, affecting six provinces for nearly 87 minutes. Some legacy voice calls were missed, though Bell stated no critical public safety incidents resulted.
A latent software issue in Bell Canada's Next Generation 911 (NG9-1-1) system caused an emergency services outage across six Canadian provinces on September 17, 2026, according to a report filed with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). The disruption began at 3:13 a.m. ET and lasted approximately 87 minutes before service was restored at 4:40 a.m.
The outage affected Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. Bell confirmed the incident was not a cyber attack and did not result from planned or unplanned change activity. It marked the first outage of its kind since the NG9-1-1 system launched in early 2022.
During the disruption, the vast majority of calls were successfully managed by backup systems. However, some legacy voice calls routed through older systems were missed if they were destined for a call centre using next-generation technology. Bell stated that none of the missed calls led to a "critical public safety incident." The company declined to disclose the specific number of missed calls and redacted details about the software flaw in its public report to prevent potential exploitation by hackers.
The response to the outage was delayed by alarm failures. Two initial alarms triggered at 3:13 a.m. and 3:19 a.m. failed to activate a "war room" crisis response. Engineers were notified only after a separate alarm flagged an unusual drop in incoming calls 24 minutes later.
Following the incident, Bell implemented a permanent software solution and established independent monitoring mechanisms.