8 ms·

Phone services disrupted across B.C., but emergency calls still working

63 points by bitminer 7y ago

jandrese 7y ago
If anybody else is having issues loading the article it says a landslide damaged a fiber backbone. I guess emergency services must have a backup system or maybe there is a low bandwidth secondary that can't handle regular call volume and prioritizes emergency numbers.
- OrangeMango 7y ago
  I worked on wireless infrastructure software about 20 years ago - some of the stuff that counted as 3G. The phone does not "dial" the emergency phone number. It tells the tower that it needs to initiate an emergency call. At that point, the infrastructure bypasses all authentication/authorization/billing checks and connects to what the infrastructure knows as the local emergency service. It's a standard voice connection, made over the same channels as a normal call, with one exception: if there is no available channel, it drops a normal call to make room. In this case, some of the potential situations could be occurring: 1) There is still backbone (backhaul) availability, but perhaps the connection to the subscriber database has been severed. No normal calls can be authenticated, but emergency calls don't get authenticated and are thus not impacted. 2) Everything is working normally but at drastically reduced capacity. With the normal load of emergency calls, there is simply not enough capacity for normal calls. If this is the case, it is possible that not all emergency calls are being completed - the emergency operations center would not have the ability to know if this was the case.
  - hapidjus 7y ago
    Would it be possible to flood the mast with emergency calls to drop all other calls?
    - numpad0 7y ago
      Yeah and that’s a way to get some sentences. IIRC cell towers generate temporary phone numbers and session IDs so a person in distress may use even sketchy phones without SIM or legit serial numbers to make a call for help.
      - kevin_nisbet 7y ago
        This is correct. But IIRC (it's been awhile), the device also sends it's programmed hardware id to the network, which in theory would allow the device to be tracked to some extent after flooding the network. The emergency call itself doesn't require a sim or active account (atleast in Canada). I do have a recollection of watching a network outage ticket once years ago, where someone dropped their phone in a puddle which apparently caused the device to put out interference which some techs managed to track down. There is also this case from Florida: https://www.techtimes.com/articles/161146/20160526/florida-man-gets-48k-fine-from-fcc-for-using-cell-phone-jammer.htm https://www.techtimes.com/articles/161146/20160526/florida-m...
  - jvm_ 7y ago
    So, if I go to California with my NY cell phone and dial 911... I get the emergency services of the tower I connected to? Was always curious who I'd get when I'm not near home.
    - RL_Quine 7y ago
      Yes. You can always make an emergency call, without service from your actual provided, and without a SIM card.
      - jvm_ 7y ago
        But who answers? California 911 - because that's where I'm physically located. or NY 911 because that's where my phone is from?
        munk-a 7y ago
        California 911 - the fact that your phone is from NY is not only ignored but never referenced in the process - this isn't a great analogy but you could think of your cellphone as having a built-in walkie-talkie that it uses for emergency calls. All the mechanisms for making a normal phone call are discarded when you dial an emergency number. So, nowhere on the state diagram of making an emergency phone call, is the box that says "Tell the user to dial 1 before a long distance number" - they are two separate systems.
        anticensor 7y ago
        Routing code + emergency number does work in some countries as a normally billed emergency call. Some countries silently redirect emergency call into billing infrastructure too.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        Keverw 7y ago
        Based on your location, but I know that there's stories about location not being accurate, remember seeing a report that some Pizza app and ride sharing apps can be more accurate. Someone told me on their cell phone 911 went to state's highway patrol instead of the city police, not sure if true or not since haven't had to dial 911 from a cell phone. However if you have VOIP, not all VOIP providers support 911 but the ones that do want you to set a 911 address on your account itself, phone number or for a specific Analog telephone adapter - ATA Device from my understanding. I know our cable company provides phone service and the old modem had a sticker warning about VOIP and E911, not sure if the new one does or not since haven't looked at it too much.
  - bonyt 7y ago
    Is this still true in the days of VoLTE and packet switching for LTE cell networks?
  - gregmac 7y ago
    Are you saying the phone sends some type of flag "emergency call" rather than the actual dialed digits? The interesting implication of this is if I'm travelling in a country with another emergency number, I can "dial" the one from my home country (which is really just the sequence to initiate "emergency call") and be connected to local services. I can see some references to 911 working on the UK phone system where the emergency number is 999 -- but this seems to be a separate mechanism (the phone company explicitly routes this number, as well as the EU emergency number 112).
    - goodcanadian 7y ago
      Yes, that is my understanding. Dialling 911, 999, 112, or 000 on your mobile phone will all work regardless of where you are.
      - OrangeMango 7y ago
        Yes, that is exactly what happened back then: it was in the ratified spec. I can't believe that newer systems would be any different.
      - xxpor 7y ago
        I've explicitly dialed 112 (when I actually had a reason to call 911) just to see if it worked. It worked perfectly fine.
        lostlogin 7y ago
        I laughed. Your thought process at that time would be interesting to see written down.
        xxpor 7y ago
        It was certainly one of those situations that if the Seattle Police had a non-emergency number that they actually wanted you to use I'd have used that instead.
gpvos 7y ago
Good that emergency calls still work. In the Netherlands we had a handful of service interruptions (for some regions/providers) in the last few years, and the emergency numbers went down as well. If I remember correctly, the problems were mostly caused by software.
- moftz 7y ago
  It depends on the infrastructure but sometimes emergency calls are routed differently, sometimes over completely different systems. There's a system in the US called GETS that allows federal, state, and local government agencies to make high priority calls over normal commercial phone systems and will also make use of government only phone lines, whatever will make the connection. The agency gets a special code and a certain phone number they dial first (just like using one of those old long distance cards). There is dedicated bandwidth just for these kinds of phone calls so even if all the lines are full, there is a guaranteed 90% call completion rate if the call volume is 8 times higher than normal. There's a wireless version of this too although it doesn't quite work the same so I'm not sure how effective it really is.
  - gpvos 7y ago
    The Netherlands has a network for the emergency services that is entirely separated from the normal phone network ("Noodnet"). It has a limited service and bandwidth and normally has no interconnection with the normal phone network (so is not intended or usable for emergency calls from the public), but is designed to be very resilient. I don't think it is used when the normal phone network is still functioning. I have no idea how they test it; it must all be rather expensive.
blondie9x 7y ago
It looks like this is related to another extreme weather event. An epic rainstorm. https://www.straight.com/tech/1354721/rogers-and-bell-cellphone-service-down-across-much-british-columbia-wake-rainstorm https://www.straight.com/tech/1354721/rogers-and-bell-cellph... climate change is making rain storms more powerful and intense.
- noizejoy 7y ago
  I’m assuming that the link in parent post is in error and was intended to be this one[0], which specifically mentions the connection between climate change and the extraordinarily high amounts of rain having fallen in the area around the time of the outage: [0] https://www.straight.com/life/1354586/pineapple-express-brings-stunning-amounts-rain-south-coast-british-columbia https://www.straight.com/life/1354586/pineapple-express-brin... p.s. I’ve always liked that these winter rain storms coming into BC, Canada from the general direction of Hawaii are colloquially called “Pineapple Express”.
malandrew 7y ago
We experienced this in Central Washington this weekend as well (around Leavenworth and Steven's Pass). Cell service went out late Saturday night and only recovered Sunday afternoon.
sbarre 7y ago
I find it interesting that all our major _competing_ cell phone providers were equally affected in a pretty material way by this. The claim (by Bell) is that a "third-party fibre line" way up in North Bend BC was the root cause of this problem.. I know providers all stick their own gear on the same towers, but I guess I didn't realize how common it was for the top-level providers (i.e. the ILECs) to lease cables (as opposed to running their own). I always assumed this was just the resellers (CLECs) who did it.. I wonder if that cable is fully third-party owned, or belongs to TELUS (the quad-play provider for western Canada) and Bell/Rogers lease capacity from them for their wireless services.
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  > North Bend BC OT, but I was curious and looked it up, and there are three North Bends in the Pacific Northwest (OR, WA, and BC). What a coincidence!
  - warlog 7y ago
    Norther Bend and Northiest Bend? Or North Bendier and North Bendiest?
    - sbarre 7y ago
      BC's would definitely be Northiest Bend.. It's not that bendy but definitely very northy
- bearcobra 7y ago
  Based on an area information lookup, the line likely belongs to Shaw https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/sitt/bbmap/hm.html?lang=eng https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/sitt/bbmap/hm.html?lang=eng
- JTon 7y ago
  Longhaul cable infrastructure is expensive. Especially in Canada where business cases are crippled by thousands of km of emptiness (no opportunity to recover investments). Providers often swap lines through IRU agreements to reduce capital intensity. I've heard but can't confirm the infrastructure in question was laid down by CP and CN rail back in the 90s. I don't know the ownership structure. But I know the railways are still involved in the maintenance.
elchief 7y ago
I'm working from home today because my work's primary and secondary lines to our data centre are down. We have a tertiary but it's slow. So they didn't want ppl coming in to the office and using all the bandwidth

63 points by bitminer 7y ago

If anybody else is having issues loading the article it says a landslide damaged a fiber backbone. I guess emergency services must have a backup system or maybe there is a low bandwidth secondary that can't handle regular call volume and prioritizes emergency numbers.

OrangeMango 7y ago
I worked on wireless infrastructure software about 20 years ago - some of the stuff that counted as 3G. The phone does not "dial" the emergency phone number. It tells the tower that it needs to initiate an emergency call. At that point, the infrastructure bypasses all authentication/authorization/billing checks and connects to what the infrastructure knows as the local emergency service. It's a standard voice connection, made over the same channels as a normal call, with one exception: if there is no available channel, it drops a normal call to make room. In this case, some of the potential situations could be occurring: 1) There is still backbone (backhaul) availability, but perhaps the connection to the subscriber database has been severed. No normal calls can be authenticated, but emergency calls don't get authenticated and are thus not impacted. 2) Everything is working normally but at drastically reduced capacity. With the normal load of emergency calls, there is simply not enough capacity for normal calls. If this is the case, it is possible that not all emergency calls are being completed - the emergency operations center would not have the ability to know if this was the case.
- hapidjus 7y ago
  Would it be possible to flood the mast with emergency calls to drop all other calls?
  - numpad0 7y ago
    Yeah and that’s a way to get some sentences. IIRC cell towers generate temporary phone numbers and session IDs so a person in distress may use even sketchy phones without SIM or legit serial numbers to make a call for help.
    - kevin_nisbet 7y ago
      This is correct. But IIRC (it's been awhile), the device also sends it's programmed hardware id to the network, which in theory would allow the device to be tracked to some extent after flooding the network. The emergency call itself doesn't require a sim or active account (atleast in Canada). I do have a recollection of watching a network outage ticket once years ago, where someone dropped their phone in a puddle which apparently caused the device to put out interference which some techs managed to track down. There is also this case from Florida: https://www.techtimes.com/articles/161146/20160526/florida-man-gets-48k-fine-from-fcc-for-using-cell-phone-jammer.htm https://www.techtimes.com/articles/161146/20160526/florida-m...
- jvm_ 7y ago
  So, if I go to California with my NY cell phone and dial 911... I get the emergency services of the tower I connected to? Was always curious who I'd get when I'm not near home.
  - RL_Quine 7y ago
    Yes. You can always make an emergency call, without service from your actual provided, and without a SIM card.
    - jvm_ 7y ago
      But who answers? California 911 - because that's where I'm physically located. or NY 911 because that's where my phone is from?
      - munk-a 7y ago
        California 911 - the fact that your phone is from NY is not only ignored but never referenced in the process - this isn't a great analogy but you could think of your cellphone as having a built-in walkie-talkie that it uses for emergency calls. All the mechanisms for making a normal phone call are discarded when you dial an emergency number. So, nowhere on the state diagram of making an emergency phone call, is the box that says "Tell the user to dial 1 before a long distance number" - they are two separate systems.
        anticensor 7y ago
        Routing code + emergency number does work in some countries as a normally billed emergency call. Some countries silently redirect emergency call into billing infrastructure too.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - Keverw 7y ago
        Based on your location, but I know that there's stories about location not being accurate, remember seeing a report that some Pizza app and ride sharing apps can be more accurate. Someone told me on their cell phone 911 went to state's highway patrol instead of the city police, not sure if true or not since haven't had to dial 911 from a cell phone. However if you have VOIP, not all VOIP providers support 911 but the ones that do want you to set a 911 address on your account itself, phone number or for a specific Analog telephone adapter - ATA Device from my understanding. I know our cable company provides phone service and the old modem had a sticker warning about VOIP and E911, not sure if the new one does or not since haven't looked at it too much.
- bonyt 7y ago
  Is this still true in the days of VoLTE and packet switching for LTE cell networks?
- gregmac 7y ago
  Are you saying the phone sends some type of flag "emergency call" rather than the actual dialed digits? The interesting implication of this is if I'm travelling in a country with another emergency number, I can "dial" the one from my home country (which is really just the sequence to initiate "emergency call") and be connected to local services. I can see some references to 911 working on the UK phone system where the emergency number is 999 -- but this seems to be a separate mechanism (the phone company explicitly routes this number, as well as the EU emergency number 112).
  - goodcanadian 7y ago
    Yes, that is my understanding. Dialling 911, 999, 112, or 000 on your mobile phone will all work regardless of where you are.
    - OrangeMango 7y ago
      Yes, that is exactly what happened back then: it was in the ratified spec. I can't believe that newer systems would be any different.
    - xxpor 7y ago
      I've explicitly dialed 112 (when I actually had a reason to call 911) just to see if it worked. It worked perfectly fine.
      - lostlogin 7y ago
        I laughed. Your thought process at that time would be interesting to see written down.
        xxpor 7y ago
        It was certainly one of those situations that if the Seattle Police had a non-emergency number that they actually wanted you to use I'd have used that instead.

gpvos 7y ago

Good that emergency calls still work. In the Netherlands we had a handful of service interruptions (for some regions/providers) in the last few years, and the emergency numbers went down as well. If I remember correctly, the problems were mostly caused by software.

moftz 7y ago
It depends on the infrastructure but sometimes emergency calls are routed differently, sometimes over completely different systems. There's a system in the US called GETS that allows federal, state, and local government agencies to make high priority calls over normal commercial phone systems and will also make use of government only phone lines, whatever will make the connection. The agency gets a special code and a certain phone number they dial first (just like using one of those old long distance cards). There is dedicated bandwidth just for these kinds of phone calls so even if all the lines are full, there is a guaranteed 90% call completion rate if the call volume is 8 times higher than normal. There's a wireless version of this too although it doesn't quite work the same so I'm not sure how effective it really is.
- gpvos 7y ago
  The Netherlands has a network for the emergency services that is entirely separated from the normal phone network ("Noodnet"). It has a limited service and bandwidth and normally has no interconnection with the normal phone network (so is not intended or usable for emergency calls from the public), but is designed to be very resilient. I don't think it is used when the normal phone network is still functioning. I have no idea how they test it; it must all be rather expensive.

blondie9x 7y ago

It looks like this is related to another extreme weather event. An epic rainstorm. https://www.straight.com/tech/1354721/rogers-and-bell-cellphone-service-down-across-much-british-columbia-wake-rainstorm https://www.straight.com/tech/1354721/rogers-and-bell-cellph... climate change is making rain storms more powerful and intense.

noizejoy 7y ago
I’m assuming that the link in parent post is in error and was intended to be this one[0], which specifically mentions the connection between climate change and the extraordinarily high amounts of rain having fallen in the area around the time of the outage: [0] https://www.straight.com/life/1354586/pineapple-express-brings-stunning-amounts-rain-south-coast-british-columbia https://www.straight.com/life/1354586/pineapple-express-brin... p.s. I’ve always liked that these winter rain storms coming into BC, Canada from the general direction of Hawaii are colloquially called “Pineapple Express”.

malandrew 7y ago

We experienced this in Central Washington this weekend as well (around Leavenworth and Steven's Pass). Cell service went out late Saturday night and only recovered Sunday afternoon.

sbarre 7y ago

I find it interesting that all our major _competing_ cell phone providers were equally affected in a pretty material way by this. The claim (by Bell) is that a "third-party fibre line" way up in North Bend BC was the root cause of this problem.. I know providers all stick their own gear on the same towers, but I guess I didn't realize how common it was for the top-level providers (i.e. the ILECs) to lease cables (as opposed to running their own). I always assumed this was just the resellers (CLECs) who did it.. I wonder if that cable is fully third-party owned, or belongs to TELUS (the quad-play provider for western Canada) and Bell/Rogers lease capacity from them for their wireless services.

bobthepanda 7y ago
> North Bend BC OT, but I was curious and looked it up, and there are three North Bends in the Pacific Northwest (OR, WA, and BC). What a coincidence!
- warlog 7y ago
  Norther Bend and Northiest Bend? Or North Bendier and North Bendiest?
  - sbarre 7y ago
    BC's would definitely be Northiest Bend.. It's not that bendy but definitely very northy
bearcobra 7y ago
Based on an area information lookup, the line likely belongs to Shaw https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/sitt/bbmap/hm.html?lang=eng https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/sitt/bbmap/hm.html?lang=eng
JTon 7y ago
Longhaul cable infrastructure is expensive. Especially in Canada where business cases are crippled by thousands of km of emptiness (no opportunity to recover investments). Providers often swap lines through IRU agreements to reduce capital intensity. I've heard but can't confirm the infrastructure in question was laid down by CP and CN rail back in the 90s. I don't know the ownership structure. But I know the railways are still involved in the maintenance.

elchief 7y ago

I'm working from home today because my work's primary and secondary lines to our data centre are down. We have a tertiary but it's slow. So they didn't want ppl coming in to the office and using all the bandwidth