Canadian telecoms work to bolster networks amid growing wildfire activity – National | Globalnews.ca

Like wind-driven Wildfire Last summer, a hurricane struck the Hawaiian island of Maui, killing more than 100 people and destroying thousands of buildings. telecommunications The power outage left many residents in the dark.

The outage exacerbated an already dire situation in areas such as the town of Lahaina, which has about 13,000 residents, where evacuation orders and emergency communications for first responders were hampered.

In addition to all cell phones and landlines being out in Lahaina, the area also experienced days of commercial electric service outages.

Authorities are still piecing together the pieces to understand how so much went wrong. There is one important lesson from the Maui wildfires: Resilient telecommunications networks are critical when disaster strikes.

Rising wildfire activity in remote areas has also drawn attention from companies and regulators in other jurisdictions, including Canada.

“We need to understand the limitations of the Internet and have plans for situations where we might lose our typical sources of information,” said Jenifer Sunrise Winter, a professor of communications at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

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

Last month, a wildfire near Fort Nelson, British Columbia, destroyed fiber-optic lines, causing days of cellular and internet outages in the northern part of the province, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories.

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

Canada's telecom regulator is well aware of the problem. Two consultations on the topic are currently ongoing, one on how to improve telecom services in the Far North and the other on how service providers should report and notify customers of major service outages.

“The reality is that no network is perfect. Canada has the highest quality networks in the world, but predicting and preventing every potential failure is an impossible task,” said Adam Scott, vice chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, in a speech at a recent industry event hosted by the Ivey Business School in Toronto.

“When our networks are becoming increasingly complex and the threats we face, including from extreme weather or malicious actors, are more volatile and unpredictable than ever before, the consequences of not being prepared are dire.”

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Hawaii wildfires: West Maui residents forced to flee as flames engulf homes

Canada's three largest suppliers say they have robust plans in place to mitigate the impact of wildfires on their infrastructure.

Bell Canada, Rogers Communications and Telus all tout common elements of their strategies, such as year-round reviews of network stability, fuel-powered generators in key areas and collaboration with provincial emergency management teams.

The companies have also been working on unique initiatives.

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

The Pano AI camera is designed to detect smoke within a 24-kilometer range, allowing firefighters to see real-time footage of potential wildfire smoke and respond faster when necessary.

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

“The sooner we find something … the better, because we can use that to get resources to the ground quicker.”

Satellite connectivity is also seen as a potential solution to keep customers connected during emergencies, especially in remote areas.

Telus announced last year that it had successfully trialed a technology that lets smartphones send and receive voice calls and text messages using satellites. The test was conducted in partnership with Montreal-based vendor TerreStar Solutions Inc. and Skylo, a provider of non-terrestrial network services.

Rogers has partnered with SpaceX and Lynk Global to provide satellite-to-phone connections, while New Brunswick-based rural internet provider Xplore Inc. pledged to provide satellite internet in remote areas after the launch of the Jupiter 3 satellite last fall.

“People look to satellite as a great alternative or redundant connection in an emergency because you can take it with you,” said Rob McMahon, associate professor of media and technology at the University of Alberta.

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

“As more users come online, how will the quality of service degrade?” he said, adding that satellite technology remains expensive for average users.

Bell and Telus highlighted their respective evolving fiber networks, which Bell 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, vice president of emergency response at Telus, during a speech at an Ivey Business School event last month.

“The poles at the base of our fiber lines were burned and actually wiggling, but the network was still flowing. Everything was fine.”

Despite these advances, McMahon said there are still gaps in Canada's telecommunications industry's ability to respond to disruptions that could result from wildfires.

He noted that rural and remote areas face many barriers, and that they often have limited infrastructure – in terms of access roads and communications – compared to more populous urban centres.

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

Such is the case with West James Bay Telecom Network, a non-profit, Indigenous-owned fiber-optic internet provider that serves residents living along Ontario’s James Bay coast from Moosonee to Fort Albany, Cachechewan and Attawapiskat.

“They rely on a single regional transportation network,” McMahon said.

“If that line is cut, their connection is severed.”

Telus' Moore said the industry standard is generally considered to be two transmission routes to keep the network running in an emergency.

“But this is a big country,” he said.

While Moore said Telus is “slowly building” a third cross-Canada line, he noted Canadian telecoms face challenges that their global peers do not. Chief among them is the cost of building a network in Canada, which is high compared to other large countries due to factors such as size, density and topography.

However, as wildfire activity has increased in recent years, Moore said Telus has also increased spending on network resiliency. This includes clearing vegetation around cell towers and other critical infrastructure in areas where dry conditions pose a higher risk of fire spread.

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

“The telecoms industry is fragile, we all know that. No matter how much you invest in it, it remains vulnerable to all sorts of climate hazards.”