A Telus sign is pictured at the company’s annual meeting in Vancouver on May 8, 2014. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck)
Following a lengthy 911 outage in March 2025 that left dozens of emergency calls undelivered in Brandon, TELUS has rolled out a series of new safeguards to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
The outage, which began on March 22 and lasted more than 36 hours, was caused by a technical failure in equipment leased from Bell that handles 911 call traffic from TELUS to Manitoba’s emergency dispatch system.
In a response letter to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, TELUS acknowledges the problem was made worse by internal missteps — specifically, a technician who failed to follow proper protocols and escalation procedures, delaying the resolution.
As a result, 177 emergency calls from 59 people failed to reach 911 dispatchers in Brandon. The issue was not fully resolved until the afternoon of March 24 when Brandon’s emergency dispatch centre contacted TELUS directly.
In response, TELUS has introduced a fully independent backup route to Bell’s 911 system to ensure emergency calls can be rerouted in the event of future failures. The company has also built a tertiary backup that connects 911 calls to a live TELUS operator if both primary and backup systems go down. Additionally, internal disciplinary actions were taken, and staff have undergone retraining to reinforce proper emergency escalation procedures.
