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The new rules, which come into force on March 8, are temporary while the CRTC conducts a .

鈥淐anadians are experiencing an increased frequency of outages to crucial telecommunications networks,鈥� the CRTC said Wednesday, noting the disruptions stem from a variety of causes, including extreme weather events, cyber-attacks and accidents.

鈥淚n many cases, the Commission has first learned about an outage through news reports or complaints from Canadians,鈥� the CRTC said in a notice of consultation published Wednesday.

Service providers will now be required to inform the CRTC within two hours of becoming aware of 鈥渕ajor鈥� outages. Those are generally defined as affecting more than 100,000 subscribers for more than an hour (or subscribers in an area served by just one carrier) or incidents that knock out 鈥渃ritical infrastructure鈥� or a 911 network.

Canada鈥檚 biggest telecoms sign memorandum

Within two weeks after that, telecoms must file a 鈥渃omprehensive鈥� report detailing the root causes of the outage, steps taken to resolve the service interruption and plans to avoid such issues in the future.

Carriers will also be required to spell out how the outage affected emergency communications and accessibility services for deaf, hard-of-hearing, or visually impaired persons.

After the Rogers outage, 12 of Canada鈥檚 biggest telecoms signed a memorandum of understanding 鈥渢o provide emergency roaming, mutual assistance, and communications to the public and governmental authorities during a critical network failure.鈥�

The CRTC said the interim rules build on the requirements in that agreement and go beyond relying on proactive communications from telecom companies dealing with an outage.

The commission is seeking feedback on outage reporting requirements by March 24 and said it will 鈥渋nitiate additional public proceedings to address network resiliency in broader terms.鈥�

After the Rogers outage last summer, the CRTC faced calls to be more transparent about its process when it comes to outages and to establish set protocols for service providers to follow.