A cell tower outside the One Mount Pleasant Road offices of Rogers Communications in Toronto.Melissa Tait/The Globe and Mail
The chief executive of Rogers Communications Inc. RCI-B-T is committing to make “every change and investment needed” to ensure the company does not suffer another outage like the one that left millions across the country without cellphone, internet and 911 services last Friday.
In his most recent letter to Canadians, Tony Staffieri said the Toronto-based telecom is working with the government and with other telecom companies to “implement what is needed to ensure that 911 and essential services can continue, no matter what outage may occur.”
Mr. Staffieri said his company’s network is now fully operational and Rogers has increased the credit it will provide on customers’ bills because some of them continued to experience issues. The company had initially planned to provide a two-day credit, but on Tuesday announced it would credit customers the equivalent of five days of service.
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“I understand that it is only through our actions, and with time, that we can restore your confidence in us,” Mr. Staffieri wrote in his third open letter since Friday. “We can and will do better.”
Friday’s outage occurred eight months into Mr. Staffieri’s term as president and CEO of Rogers, which began after a fractious boardroom battle that resulted in his predecessor, Joe Natale, being fired. The service disruption followed a nationwide wireless service outage in April, 2021.
Rogers has said Friday’s outage occurred because of a coding error as part of a maintenance update to its core network, which caused some of its routers to overload and the core gateway to shut down. In addition to leaving customers without internet, wireless, home phone and emergency services, the service disruption also impacted the Interac debit system, leaving companies unable to process transactions.
The outage highlighted the telecom giant’s prevalence in Canada just as Rogers is attempting to convince regulators its proposed $26-billion takeover of Shaw Communications Inc. won’t harm consumers by reducing competition.
Canada’s Commissioner of Competition is attempting to block the takeover, which would combine Canada’s two largest cable networks, arguing it would lead to higher prices and poorer service, particularly for cellphone customers. Rogers has attempted to address those concerns by agreeing to sell Shaw’s Freedom Mobile to Quebecor Inc. for $2.85-billion.
On Tuesday, Canada’s telecom regulator sent Rogers a long list of detailed questions regarding the outage.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is giving Rogers until July 22 to provide information such as a timeline of the events that unfolded, the number of customers affected in each province, the factors that contributed to the outage and prevented it from being contained, and the company’s internal process for making major network upgrades.
The CRTC is also asking Rogers to explain what measures were put in place following last year’s outage and why they failed to prevent the most recent service disruption. The regulator said in its letter to the company that it expects Rogers to disclose information on the public record “to the maximum extent possible.”
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