Communications

A cell site does not have to fall over to stop working:

A voice call holds a channel open for as long as it lasts; a text is a short burst that keeps retrying until it lands. [5]

The same filling-up happens to 9-1-1. E-Comm, which answers 9-1-1 calls for the Lower Mainland, says: “We received a 1,500 per cent increase in 9-1-1 calls after a 4.7 earthquake in 2015. The vast majority of those calls were not emergencies.” [6] The count comes from one small earthquake and is not a forecast for a large one.

The province’s megathrust assessment states that “disruptions in communications continue for days to weeks”, with access prioritised for emergency personnel, “leading to a prolonged lack of access to communications for the general population”. [1] The assessment gives no site counts or outage curve and applies to a magnitude 9.0 Cascadia earthquake.

The response strategy does not separate copper from cellular: “common communication service providers, including cellular and landline telephone providers, may be impacted”. [5] It names “satellite phones and amateur radio services” as the backups people would fall back on. Radio fills up the way the cellular network does: “Radio communication, if operable, may be also congested and impact the ability of first responders if saturated with non-sanctioned operators.” [5]

Non-sanctioned means outside the province’s own volunteer service. Through the Provincial Emergency Radio Communications Service it has installed amateur radio equipment at each of its regional emergency operations centres, though “some regions have a limited number of radio operators”. [5] The distinction is whether an operator joined an organised group before the earthquake.

A cell site is a radio and a computer in a cabinet, usually on a rooftop or at the foot of a mast, and both run on grid power. When the power goes, the site switches to its own batteries, and at some sites to a generator. How long the grid takes to come back is on electricity, and a generator runs as long as somebody keeps delivering fuel.

Bell says every one of its cell sites has a battery, a generator or both. Its batteries are built to last between two and eight hours, and its generators a day or two at the sites that have one. On a rooftop, where a permanent generator often cannot go, it relies on a larger battery and a generator brought in by truck. [2] TELUS sorts its sites into three tiers, with targets from a day at a standard site to a week or more at the most critical. [7] [3] Rogers has not made its figures public. [8] All three were describing their networks across Canada, in answers to the regulator.

Backup of this kind is built for an ordinary power cut. The industry guidance in the regulator’s proceeding sizes a battery for a typical outage, or for the time it takes a crew to arrive with a portable generator. [4] When Hurricane Fiona hit Atlantic Canada in 2022, Bell’s sites ran on batteries and then on generators, and refuelling became the problem: gas stations without power could not pump fuel, and fallen trees and power lines kept crews away from the sites. [9] After an earthquake, the roads and the fuel supply are among the things that break.

No Canadian rule sets a minimum. On 4 September 2025 the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the federal telecom regulator, opened a proceeding on network resiliency and put this to the industry: “What parameters should TSPs use to determine an appropriate backup power run time for each type of network site?” [4] TSPs are the telephone and internet companies themselves. The guidance reproduced in the proceeding’s appendix uses “should”, making it a recommendation. [4]

Bell, TELUS and Rogers each told the regulator that backup power should stay a matter of good practice rather than a rule. [2] [7] [8] The record closed in late August 2026. No decision has been issued. [4]

Telecom Decision CRTC 2025-225, in force since 4 November 2025, requires a provider to notify the Commission, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and emergency management organisations within two hours of a major outage, and to file a report within fourteen days. [10] It sets no backup-power requirement and no requirement to physically strengthen anything. [10] Telecom Decision CRTC 2025-65, from February 2025, requires that 9-1-1 traffic be given priority on the network where that is technically feasible. [11]

Guidance under an earlier Commission policy sets backup power of at least 24 hours for central office 9-1-1 switches and 72 hours for tandem switches. [12] Those are the switching offices that route a 9-1-1 call, not the radio sites the call travels over. Both figures are guidance, and neither is binding. [12]

On 28 November 2025 the Province of British Columbia filed its own submission in that proceeding. It asks the Commission to mandate a minimum of 72 hours of autonomous backup power at core and high-priority sites, 120 hours as best practice in remote areas, seismic-rated shelter foundations in high-risk zones, and annual stress testing including a “Massive Traffic Surge” scenario. [13] It names “Seismic Events: High earthquake risk in southwestern BC” as one of four risk categories facing the province. [13]

The submission is a request, not a rule. It does not describe what is in place today.

E-Comm’s Lower Mainland centre is a 60,000 square foot reinforced concrete post-disaster building, “designed to resist an earthquake and to operate self-sufficiently for up to 72 hours”. [14] This applies to the centre receiving the call, not the cabinets and towers carrying it. E-Comm itself told the regulator that there are no defined service levels for the resiliency of 9-1-1 today. [15]

Earthquake Early Warning has been live in British Columbia since spring 2024, delivered over the national public alerting system. [16] BC Emergency Alert reaches a phone only over a live LTE cellular network. [17]

How much warning there is depends on how far away the earthquake starts. Natural Resources Canada, which runs the system, publishes only “seconds to tens-of-seconds” and says the number depends on distance. [18] It models named earthquakes instead, and Vancouver appears in three of them.

For a shallow earthquake directly under a city, the closest case it has modelled is Victoria, where near the epicentre “alerts would have very short warning times, or even arrive too late”. [22] Ground close to any epicentre falls in what it calls a late alert zone, where the alert arrives after the shaking starts. [16]