Outage of Rogers: the government asks the telecoms to reach an agreement

Canadian Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said he had instructed Canada’s major telecommunications networks to establish a formal agreement to mitigate damage from future outages.

Following a closed-door meeting with the CEO of Rogers and the heads of other telecommunications service providers on Monday, Champagne said he had given the group 60 days to consider emergency roaming, l mutual assistance in the event of a breakdown and the development of a communication protocol to better inform the public and the authorities of any emergency situation.

Champagne said it was a « first step » in tackling the resilience and reliability of the sector.

The Rogers outage began early Friday morning and lasted around 15 hours, affecting millions of homes and businesses. It also hampered customers’ ability to use emergency services like calling 911.

Rogers claims the “network system outage” was triggered by a core network maintenance update, which caused the routers to malfunction.

While the company confirmed on Saturday that most of its system has been restored for the vast majority of customers, some are still reporting issues.

The event sparked renewed calls for increased competition in the telecommunications space to mitigate the widespread impact of a future outage.

That is why I have today brought together the leaders of the major telecommunications companies to demand that they take immediate action to improve the resilience and reliability of our networks by ensuring that a formal agreement is in place in the 60 days.

— François-Philippe Champagne (FPC) 🇨🇦 (@FP_Champagne) July 11, 2022

This is only a first step. Canadians deserve more from their providers in terms of service quality and reliability, and I will ensure that they meet the high standards that Canadians expect, including improving competition, innovation and affordability.

— François-Philippe Champagne (FPC) 🇨🇦 (@FP_Champagne) July 11, 2022

More soon.