Rogers says it couldn’t have restored emergency services any faster during outage

Article content

TORONTO — Rogers Communications Inc. says in a submission to the federal telecom regulator that it could not have restored emergency services any faster during a widespread service outage earlier this month that crippled the company’s networks and affected millions of customers across Canada.

Article content

New details about the extent of the disruption were also included in the filing and range from media outlets unable to produce news broadcasts to outages for all customers in critical infrastructure such as hospitals and energy providers.

Faced with complaints and calls for a public inquiry, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission had given Rogers until Friday to explain what caused the outage, how widespread the problem was and the steps being taken to prevent a similar problem from happening again.

Much of the specific information the telecom company provided were redacted from the document by the CRTC for security and competitive purposes.

Rogers said the extent of the problem, which disconnected all wireless and hardwired services for its customers and other providers who use Rogers’ network, meant the only way to restore 911 and alert services was to tackle the problem at its source rather than specifically target those areas for priority repairs.

Company representatives are scheduled to appear before a Commons committee on Monday to further discuss the outage.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 22, 2022.