CRTC orders Rogers to explain its network failure

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has ordered Rogers Communications to provide a “comprehensive explanation” of the network outage that occurred on July 8.

As a part of the order, the CRTC has asked the telecommunications giant why and how the outage happened. The Commission noted that this is the first step in increasing resiliency for all Canadians.

In a discussion with executives from Canada’s biggest telecommunication providers, François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, directed the telcos to reach an agreement on emergency roaming, mutual assistance during outages, and communication to their customers within 60 days.

Although there is an informal mutual assistance arrangement already in place, Champagne wants to formalize that and “define it in very specific terms.”

In a public statement, Ian Scott, chairperson of the CRTC, supported the Minister’s actions.

“Once we are satisfied with Rogers’ response to our questions, we will determine what additional measures need to be taken,” wrote Scott in the letter.

Rogers president Tony Staffieri attributed the outage to “a network system failure following a maintenance update in our core network” that caused some of its routers to fail. As compensation, the company promised to issue credits to its customers equal to five days of service.

Rogers may be facing at least two class action lawsuits as a result of the network failure: one on behalf of all affected customers and another on behalf of retailers and entrepreneurs.

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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Tom Li
Tom Li
Telecommunication and consumer hardware are Tom's main beats at IT World Canada. He loves to talk about Canada's network infrastructure, semiconductor products, and of course, anything hot and new in the consumer technology space. You'll also occasionally see his name appended to articles on cloud, security, and SaaS-related news. If you're ever up for a lengthy discussion about the nuances of each of the above sectors or have an upcoming product that people will love, feel free to drop him a line at tli@itwc.ca.

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