Canada’s telecommunications regulator is launching a public consultation to get a clearer picture of cellphone dead zones after several provinces ordered their own studies over concerns that current maps underestimate gaps in coverage.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission issued a call for comments on Thursday on how cellular coverage data are collected and reported, saying the consultation will help it address gaps in coverage and inform funding decisions.
“This will help service providers, governments, public safety organizations, and Canadians better identify where coverage is strong and where improvements are needed,” the CRTC said in a news release.
The CRTC’s announcement is a step toward that goal. Yet it issued its request for comments nine months after it received the recommendations on which it is now asking for feedback, and three years after François-Philippe Champagne, then minister of innovation, science and industry, issued a policy directive ordering the telecom agency to develop and implement a standardized and robust approach for reporting mobile wireless coverage.
Five months after that directive, then-deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland called for urgent action on the issue of cellphone dead zones and spotty mobile wireless coverage, directing the CRTC to address the issue in the wake of deadly flooding in Nova Scotia in July of 2023.
The CRTC move follows heightened attention to the issue of cellphone dead zones across the country. Four provinces have conducted their own cellular gap assessments in recent years because federal coverage maps do not align with residents’ experiences, The Globe and Mail reported late last year.
According to CRTC data, roughly 15,000 kilometres – or 13.4 per cent – of major roads have no mobile service. However, several provinces found that those figures understate the scale of the problem.
Highways with gaps in cellular coverage twist through all parts of the country, and affect countless individuals every day, from lost tourists and stranded drivers facing mechanical breakdowns to victims of car accidents and evacuees fleeing forest fires.
Many rural residents, provincial politicians and experts say dead zones pose unacceptable public safety risks and are calling on the federal government to steer the expansion of mobile service to cover the country’s major roads.
Why Canada’s roadways are studded with cellphone ‘dead zones’
The CRTC said setting a new mobile reporting standard would allow it to obtain higher-quality data from service providers that more accurately represent actual mobile coverage.
Currently, the CRTC’s reports are based on predictive modelling provided by carriers, as opposed to direct field measurement, and there is no agreed-upon methodology for generating those predictions, the agency said.
“An important step in closing these gaps is to improve the accuracy of information on where they are located,” the CRTC said in consultation documents.
As part of the consultation, the CRTC is requesting feedback on a range of technical recommendations made as part of a report it commissioned from Britain-based technology consulting company FarrPoint.
Those recommendations, published in April, 2025, were based on discussions with the Canadian government, mobile operators and foreign regulators.
The CRTC did not respond to a question Thursday about why it waited nearly a year to launch a public consultation related to the recommendation.
Globe readers share frustrations and worries about cellular ‘dead zones’ in their areas
The slow progress speaks to the difficulties of solving the problem of dead zones in Canada, a country whose vastness makes doing so both physically and economically challenging.
The CRTC, a quasi-judicial body that regulates telecommunications providers in the public interest, has set a goal of connecting 100 per cent of Canadian households and “as many major transportation roads as possible” to mobile wireless service by 2026.
While Ottawa says it is on track to meet that goal, with 99.5 per cent of households connected, it has not set concrete steps for extending highway cell coverage, which lags significantly.
Direct-to-device satellite technology, which does not rely on cellular towers, has already been rolled out by some mobile phone companies and carriers, and could help close coverage gaps. But questions still surround the nascent technology, which Ottawa says has not supplanted the need to invest in traditional infrastructure.