Rogers to credit customers 5 days service after massive network outage

Rogers has decided to credit its customers for 5 days of service after its meltdown.

We have been listening to our customers from across the country who have told us how significant the impacts of the outage were for them. pic.twitter.com/GqApnbe7YA

— RogersHelps (@RogersHelps) July 12, 2022

The widespread Rogers service outage began on Friday morning and lasted at least 15 hours, knocking out access to many health-care, law enforcemen, 911, passport,  and banking services.

Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri has attributed the outage to a network system failure after a maintenance update, adding that the "vast majority" of customers were back online.

But some customers reported service disruptions stretching into Sunday, and Rogers issued a statement acknowledging some were still experiencing service disruptions it described as intermittent.

François-Philippe Champagne also said that Canada’s broadcast regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, will investigate the recent massive Rogers Communications outage.

He expressed his anger and disappointment via a Twitter post.

The national outage of telecom services that millions of Canadians experienced in the last few days is unacceptable. Full stop. It affected people across the country, emergency services, small and medium size businesses and payment systems.

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

The minister said the agreements between the telecoms companies on emergency roaming and other policies must be in place within 60 days. Emergency roaming would give customers the ability to switch to another carrier during an outage.

“This is very much similar to what the Federal Communications Commission did in the United States,” said Champagne in a teleconference with journalists on Monday.

The industry minister said this formal agreement between the Canadian telecom companies is just the first step. However, Champagne did not provide any clarity about whether the outage will prompt new policies to promote competition in the telecom industry.