Compensation sought for communications crash
City wants answers from firm after $72M system fails on New Year’s Eve
Airbus DS Communications, the manufacturers of a $72-million communications system used by Montreal’s police and fire department and that crashed for more than an hour on New Year’s Eve, will be ordered to provide answers and some compensation to the city, the vice-chairman of the city’s executive committee said Thursday.
“We have demanded, first and foremost, that there be consequences and penalties for these outages,” Harout Chitilian told the Montreal Gazette Wednesday, referring to the communications system called SERAM used by local public security personnel.
A malfunctioning software upgrade caused the communications system to crash New Year’s Eve, as tens of thousands celebrated the arrival of 2017 downtown and in Old Montreal. “There are already clauses in the contracts that cover that aspect. But going forward we’re demanding even higher level of service and that is something that we’re openly discussing with them right now,” he said.
Chitilian stressed that in the minutes following the blackout, a back-up system that sees communications routed through department-issued cellphones kicked in, and he praised the professionalism of police and firefighters during the crash.
The crash is being blamed on the failed installation of a software patch that was supposed to synchronize the system to compensate for the “leap second” created by the slowing of the Earth’s rotation. A crash of a similar system used by Ottawa’s public transit and public works department occurred the same night and also lasted for about an hour.
First announced in 2012 as part of a $200-million upgrade of Montreal’s antiquated public security communications network, the SERAM system made headlines last May after Mayor Denis Coderre met with the head of Airbus DS Communications in the wake of several crashes of the police communications system. City hall announced after that meeting that Airbus DS had agreed — at its own expense — “to improve the resiliency of the communications system and will rapidly mobilize all the necessary resources to correct the situation.”
Opposition councillor Alex Norris, vice-chairman of the city’s public security described the latest crash as “appalling ” and said he wanted any questions to Airbus DS Communications to be posed and answered publicly.
“It’s a real fiasco,” he said. “A $70-million communications system that doesn’t work properly? I am going to asking my colleagues, the president of the public security commission, to call a public hearing at which representatives of the company can explain themselves.
“We’re not only owed compensation ... we’re also owed explanations and it should be in public.”
We have demanded, first and foremost, that there be consequences and penalties for these outages.