In early July, a massive network outage at Rogers, a Canadian telecoms giant, forced more than 10 million customers — more than a quarter of the country’s population — to shut down their Internet or wireless services. The company is now under intense pressure from regulators to explain what happened.
The aftermath of the 19-hour nationwide outage ranged from potentially dangerous to frustrating to ironic.
Police services reported that 911 services were unavailable on many cell phones. Hospitals reported communication problems, and an Ontario hospital had to reroute cancer patients when emergency radiation services were affected by the outage.
Banking services were disrupted and many businesses were unable to accept debit payments or could only accept cash.
Fans of pop superstar The Weeknd – who hails from Toronto – have been turned away after he was forced to cancel a tour stop in his hometown at Rogers Center (yes, same Rogers) stadium.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) – the regulator that oversees Rogers and other Canadian telecom companies – could not receive calls.
The company, one of Canada’s largest telecoms operators, now faces intense scrutiny from the federal government and the CRTC, which has ordered Rogers to explain in detail what caused the “unacceptable” shutdown.
Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri blamed a maintenance update for the system failure and has apologized to customers, offering a five-day service credit as compensation.
But questions remain about how a seemingly routine process has left millions without crucial access to online services – and on Friday a parliamentary committee said it would study the outage in meetings this month.
Long before the blackout, it was considered a national pastime to express frustration with Canada’s telecoms industry, which unites the country much like ice hockey and the ubiquitous Tim Hortons coffee chain.
“Rogers, Bell Canada and Telus are known to be the companies to hate,” said Richard Leblanc, professor of law, governance and ethics at York University in Toronto.
The companies control 90% of the country’s telecommunications market.
“We are essentially committed to three companies,” said Mr. Leblanc. “You have so much authority and control.”
Experts say this is a symptom of Canada’s strict foreign ownership rules for the industry.
The government has supported industries like airlines and telecoms for years, fearing foreign takeovers, said Ben Klass, a doctoral student in Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication.
“As a neighbor of the United States, Canada has a certain complex. We want to make sure we don’t just become a subsidiary of the United States.”
The oligopoly doesn’t come cheap — Canadians also pay some of the highest cell phone and roaming charges in the world, according to multiple studies.
Industry analysts say Canada’s rather uncompetitive telecoms market has allowed its big three — Rogers, Bell and Telus — to face few consequences for sometimes seedy service.
In a statement, Mr Staffieri pledged that Rogers will “make whatever change and investment is needed to ensure this.” [a similar outage] will not happen again” and would work with industry to ensure certain essential services are not disrupted by technical issues.
Bell’s top executive Mirko Bibic said last week the company takes its role in Canadians’ communications networks “very seriously” and is investing billions in upgrades for a “robust and resilient” infrastructure.
And telcos have argued that Canada’s large landmass and sparse population makes it expensive for telcos to provide services.
But Rogers in particular has had a tough time in recent months.
The massive outage in July was the second in two years.
In April 2021, the company’s wireless and wired networks similarly collapsed. At the time, Rogers blamed a software update from one of his equipment suppliers for the failure.
Months later, the company was hit by a PR crisis when the family business suffered a sibling showdown reminiscent of the HBO television show Succession.
Edward Rogers — the late family patriarch’s namesake and only son — sought to unilaterally remove then-CEO Joe Natale, blaming him for the firm’s underperformance.
- The Succession War grips Canada’s largest wireless carrier
But Mr Rogers was handicapped by his mother Loretta and two sisters, who closed in on Mr Natale and set the stage for a very public family feud.
The dispute eventually made its way to court, where a judge sided with Mr Rogers. He went on to select Mr. Staffieri, who is now the current CEO, and said he is one of the “most respected and experienced” executives in the industry.
The timing of this failure was particularly bad for Rogers as the company works to complete a proposed C$20bn (US$15bn; £13bn) takeover of rival Shaw Communications.
Mr Staffieri said this week that Rogers remains committed to the merger.
But Rogers still needs approval from the Competition Bureau Canada — the national antitrust agency — and the federal government.
And the massive outage raised doubts that regulators will choose to put more power in the hands of a single company.
“It will certainly not help their cause,” said Mr. Klass.
“Just the fact that this outage was on such a large scale and it would have been worse if Rogers Shaw had already taken over,” with an even larger customer base taken offline.
As Canadians have seen, the country’s over-reliance on just three telecom companies leaves it vulnerable to widespread network outages.
However, experts say this reliance on a few companies also makes Canada vulnerable to cyberattacks.
“We put all our eggs in one basket and that’s now a target for threat actors – Russia, China, Iran, North Korea,” said Mr Leblanc of York University.
“You don’t have to attack financial services, healthcare or emergency services, you just have to attack the telecom companies because all of these industries depend on these two or three players,” he said.
If a system failure could cripple the system for hours, enemy actors could do much more damage.
Rogers has until Friday to comply with the CRTC’s request for a detailed account of last week’s failure.
Many industry experts have gone a step further and called for a public inquiry into how this latest outage came about.
“This cannot happen behind closed doors,” Mr Leblanc said. “It has to be a public inquiry, with the telcos being dragged before elected politicians. It must be accounted for.”
For now, Mr. Leblanc, a longtime Rogers customer, has done the only thing he can do: call the competition.
“Someone is coming over on Saturday to install my internet,” he said. “I went with Bell.”
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