sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General Telecom News Manitoba ILEC looses landline and Wireless service for 8 hours

We had an outage yesterday due to an unspecified equipment outage and failure of its backup.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/mani...mts-outage-in-manitoba-1.2881814?cmp=rss

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/l...rs-286645291.html?cx_navSource=d-tiles-1

I am a MTS customer and had dial tone but could not connect to the few people I tried dialing. Would get a reorder tone or number not in service message.

I know the feeling, I have 4 OC192s down in Orlando right now... any idea what broke?

No idea and MTS is not commenting further to the media on the exact details.

This is the comment they placed on their MTS community web site around 8am Dec 23/14.

"An equipment failure caused multiple sites to lose service yesterday. Although the failed equipment had a backup it did not function properly, ultimately leading to increased wireless traffic and causing high levels of network congestion impacting 4G HSPA wireless and some wireline services. MTS network operations staff working with support from our key vendors worked to restore services. Cellular sites were reset and gradually brought back online allowing both wireless and wireline services to be restored."

Sounds like either a loss of diversity or a protection switch that failed. Sometimes you have a situation where the protect card is bad and you don't find out until the working card fails.

This was really bad as it even affected the Winnipeg 911 system and possibly the Manitoba 911 system as well as people in the rural areas using MTS were saying they could not dial out on their cells. (we only have two PSAP's in Manitoba)

I don't know how Canada deals with them but in the US, circuits that carry 911 calls are TSP coded and have to be handled under very specific protocols lest the outages become FCC reportable and result in fines.