Summary

  • The CRTC suspended the 4 November 2025 start date for its new major-outage rules four days before launch. Existing interim reporting requirements stayed in place.
  • Seven carriers challenged the new threshold; in October 2026 the regulator was still asking whether a REST/JSON interface could carry future notices and reports.

A broken network can cut off emergency calls. Public agencies need to hear about the failure while crews are trying to fix it. Canada promised a firmer way to report those failures, then stopped the new regime four days before launch. Decision 2025-225 had set 4 November 2025 for most of its new notification and post-outage reporting rules. On 31 October, the CRTC suspended that deadline while it examined a carrier challenge. The older interim reporting requirements kept running. Nearly a year later, the regulator's engineering letter still asks how to build the automated submission door.

The challenge has names. Bell Canada, Eastlink's Bragg Communications, Cogeco, Québecor, Rogers, Saskatchewan Telecommunications and TELUS filed together in October 2025; Telesat applied separately that December. The CRTC combined the cases. A March 2026 request for information records the seven applicants' estimate that the proposed major-primary-service threshold would capture more than 1,000 outages. That is their projection, not a count of reports received.

The proposed threshold is a complete primary-service loss lasting over 30 minutes and reaching 600,000 user-minutes, or an event isolating a community. The seven argued that 600,000 user-minutes would create substantial administrative work. They offered two alternatives: 50,000 users affected for more than an hour, or 1.8 million user-minutes. The CRTC asked each company to supply its own estimate and 2024–25 outage figures. This is the fight over how many incidents enter the reporting queue before anyone chooses the queue's new software.

The 8 October letter turns to that software. The CRTC proposes a REST web API carrying JSON notices and post-outage reports to public authorities. It asks potential users whether the format fits, what prevents integration, how long planning, design, development, testing and deployment would take, and who would join a working group. Replies were due 23 October. The letter sets neither a final schema nor a go-live date.

For now, the stay letter leaves interim reporting in force while the CRTC decides the new deadline. The operating question is concrete: which outages will count, and through what tested channel will a carrier send them when its network is in trouble?

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