‘No network is perfect’: Fires highlight resilience challenges for telecoms

As wind-driven fires raged on the Hawaiian island of Maui last summer, killing more than 100 people and destroying thousands of buildings, a telecommunications outage kept many residents in the dark.

The outage exacerbated an already devastating situation in areas like the town of Lahaina, home to about 13,000 people, where both evacuation orders and first responder emergency communications were hampered.

In addition to all cellphones and landlines in Lahaina being down, the area also experienced a commercial power outage for several days.

Authorities are still putting the pieces together to understand how much went wrong during the incident. A key lesson from the Maui wildfires emerged: Resilient telecommunications networks are crucial when disaster strikes.

Companies and regulators in other jurisdictions, including Canada, are taking note of increasing wildfire activity in remote regions.

“We need to understand what the limitations of the networks might be and also have plans that account for the potential loss of our typical sources of information,” said Jenifer Sunrise Winter, a communications professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

“Ideally, you’ll have multiple options if something goes wrong.”

Last month, wildfire damage to fiber lines near Fort Nelson, B.C., caused several days of cell phone and Internet outages in the province’s north, as well as the Yukon and Northwest Territories.

While telecommunications provider Northwestel worked to quickly restore service, the outage reinforced the risks faced by those in rural and remote Canada during natural disasters.

It’s an issue that Canada’s telecommunications regulator is well aware of. Two consultations addressing the subject – one looking at ways to improve telecommunications services in the Far North and another on how providers should report and notify customers of major service disruptions – remain ongoing.

“The truth is that no network is flawless. Canada has some of the highest quality networks in the world, but it’s an impossible task to predict and prevent any potential failure,” CRTC vice-chairman Adam Scott said during a speech at a recent industry. event in Toronto, hosted by the Ivey Business School.

“At a time when our networks continue to grow in complexity and the threats we face, including from extreme weather or malicious actors, are as volatile and unpredictable as they have ever been, the consequences of being unprepared are dire. “

Carriers turning to AI and satellite solutions

Canada’s three largest providers say they have solid plans in place to mitigate the effects of the fires on their infrastructure.

Bell Canada, Rogers Communications Inc. and Telus Corp. all the various common elements of their strategies, such as year-round reviews of grid stability, fuel-fired generators in key areas for electricity supply, and working with provincial emergency management teams.

The companies also worked on unique initiatives.

Through a partnership between Rogers and the BC Wildfire Service, AI cameras were installed on two of the carrier’s BC towers in April, with plans to install three more.

Pano AI cameras are designed to detect smoke up to 15 miles away, allowing fire crews to view live streams of potential fire smoke and, if necessary, respond more quickly.

“Every minute counts,” Aaron Pawlick, manager of strategic initiatives and innovation for the BC Wildfire Service, said in an interview.

“The sooner we can detect something … the better, because we could use that to send our resources to the field faster.”

Satellite connectivity has also been seen as a potential solution to keep customers connected during emergencies, especially in remote regions.

Telus announced last year that it had successfully tested technology that allows smartphones to send and receive voice calls and text messages using satellites. The test was in partnership with supplier TerreStar Solutions Inc. of Montreal and non-terrestrial network service provider Skylo.

Rogers has teamed up with SpaceX and Lynk Global to provide satellite-phone connectivity, while New Brunswick rural internet provider Xplore Inc. committed to providing satellite Internet in remote locations last fall after launching the Jupiter 3 satellite into space.

“In an emergency, people see (satellite) as a great alternative or redundant connection because you can literally take it with you,” said Rob McMahon, associate professor of media and technology at the University of Alberta.

Fiber still “king”: Telus

McMahon noted the limitations of “untested” satellite technology, including potential capacity issues compared to fiber.

“As more users come online, how will this degrade the service?” adding satellite technology is also still expensive for the average user, he said.

Bell and Telus highlighted their growing fiber networks, which the former said in a recent press release “are more resilient to extreme weather conditions, reducing the frequency and duration of weather-related outages.”

“Fiber is king,” said Phil Moore, Telus’ vice president of emergency response, during a presentation at an Ivey Business School event last month.

“We’ve had fiber lines where the poles have burned out at the bottom and they’re actually swaying and the network is still up. It’s perfectly fine.”

Despite those steps, gaps remain when it comes to preparing Canada’s telecommunications sector for potential disruptions caused by the fires, McMahon said.

He highlighted the barriers faced by rural and remote regions, which often have limited infrastructure compared to more populated centers – in terms of road access in and out, as well as communication channels.

Remote regions face redundancy gaps

McMahon said one of the biggest risks to emergency connectivity is a lack of “path diversity,” such as duplicate infrastructure or separate technologies that can carry network connections if a line goes down.

This is the case with the Western James Bay Telecom Network, a not-for-profit Indigenous-owned fiber optic internet provider for residents living on Ontario’s James Bay coast from Moosonee through Fort Albany, Kashechewan and Attawapiskat.

“They rely on one regional transportation network that goes up and down,” McMahon said.

“If that line is cut, they’re disconnected.”

Telus’ Moore said the industry standard is generally considered to be two transport routes for keeping networks up and running in an emergency.

“But it’s a big country,” he said.

While Moore said Telus is “slowly building” a third route in Canada, he pointed out that Canadian telcos face challenges that their global counterparts do not. Chief among these is the cost of building networks in Canada, which is considered expensive compared to other large countries due to factors such as size, density and terrain.

However, as wildfire activity has increased in recent years, Moore said Telus has also increased its spending on network resiliency. That includes removing vegetation around its cell towers and other critical infrastructure in areas where dry conditions have led to a greater risk of fire spreading.

“When you invest in reliability, it’s like buying insurance,” Moore said.

“Telecom is vulnerable, we are all quite aware of that. No matter how much you invest in it, it’s still vulnerable to all the different climate hazards we have.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on June 9, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:T, TSX:RCI.B, TSX:BCE)

Sammy Hudes, Canadian Press