Minister directs telecoms to reach agreement on assisting each other during outages
Posted July 11, 2022 4:18 pm.
Last Updated July 11, 2022 6:07 pm.
Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne has told telecom companies to reach agreements on emergency roaming, assisting each other during outages and a communication protocol to better inform Canadians and authorities during emergencies.
On Friday, Rogers Communications experienced a widespread network outage, causing customers and businesses across the country to be without mobile and internet services, and trouble for 9-1-1 and debit transactions.
Champagne said on Twitter on Monday that he brought together the heads of the major telecom companies and demanded they “take immediate action to improve the resiliency and reliability of our networks by ensuring a formal arrangement is in place within 60 days.”
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“This is just a first step. Canadians deserve more from their providers in terms of quality and reliability of service and I will ensure they meet the high standard that Canadians expect, including improving competition, innovation and affordability,” the minister added.
Rogers President and CEO Tony Staffieri apologized to customers again in an open letter on Saturday, and told CityNews they believe a network system failure, following a maintenance update, was what caused some routers to malfunction and caused the outage.
Staffieri says an investigation is ongoing and that Rogers will be crediting impacted customers directly.
He also says the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission will investigate the Rogers outage.
Rogers Communications is the parent company of CityNews.
