Key Takeaways:
- The major Rogers outage last week, which left millions of Canadians without connectivity for more than 15 hours, has drawn the attention of the House of Commons industry committee.
On Friday, the House of Commons industry committee decided to investigate the big Rogers outage last week that cut off communications for more than 15 hours for millions of Canadians.
During a special meeting, the committee’s MPs unanimously decided to investigate what occurred.
In addition to affecting Rogers mobile and internet users, the July 8 outage disrupted ATMs, the Interac payment system, and 911 calls in various Canadian locations.
By the month’s end, the committee will have held at least two meetings and will hear testimony from representatives of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Committee, Rogers, and Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne.
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It seeks clarification on the origin of the problem, its effects, and recommended procedures to prevent such problems in the future and improve public outreach in times of crisis.
A Rogers spokeswoman confirmed in an email that business leaders would be present at the sessions.
The spokesperson stated, “We will cooperate with the members of the standing committee on industry, science, as well as technology to provide details on the origin of the outage and the steps we are taking to improve the dependability of each of our networks going forward, including through formal mutual support agreements.
According to Laurie Bouchard, Champagne’s office was informed of the invitation, who also stated that they “will continue to engage with the committee.”
A CRTC representative promised to answer the committee’s invitation “in a timely fashion” in an email.
The country’s major telecom firms have been ordered to agree on emergency roaming, helping each other during outages, and a communication strategy to better inform Canadians during emergencies after Champagne deemed the outage “unacceptable.”
To agree, he granted them 60 days.
The outage is being looked into by the CRTC as well.
Source: CTV News
