CRTC demands answers on Rogers outage

In an uncommonly strongly worded letter, the CRTC has asked Rogers Communications Inc. to provide a broad swath of information about last Friday's outage. Writing to Rogers' senior vice-president of regulatory affairs Ted Woodhead Tuesday, the CRTC's executive director of the regulator's telecommunications sector Fiona Gilfillan wrote that in "the first several hours of the outage, it became clear that Rogers was either unable to reassure, or ineffective in reassuring, its customers and providing critical information about what to expect." "Few details regarding the outage were provided on either the company’s webpage or its social media accounts. For example, Rogers failed to provide Canadians with information about alternate means of reaching 9-1-1 in case of emergency," the letter read. The regulator goes on to ask for a "complete and detailed" report of the outage, including timelines, root causes, numbers of customers and services affected, and so on. The CRTC also wants to know what measures or steps were put in place after the last major outage in April of 2021, why they failed to prevent Friday's outage, and how Rogers' staff communicated with each other in the early hours of the outage. The regulator wants Rogers to include a description of the extent of the Interac outage, and which government services (such as health, transportation, and energy) were impacted by the outage. The commission wants answers from Rogers about how emergency services were impacted throughout the outage, and how Rogers prioritized the restoration of those services. As for compensation, the CRTC pointed to statements from Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri on the Rogers website that the company would "make this right" for customers by providing a credit. Specifically, the CRTC is asking for details of how Rogers is planning to honour the commitment to residential customers, and whether or not it will compensate wholesale customers and business customers who were also affected by the outage. The commission is giving the company until Friday, July 22 to submit its answers, after which the CRTC will post a redacted version of the responses to its website. In a statement accompanying the release of the letter Tuesday, CRTC chair Ian Scott said that "his is the first step the CRTC is taking to improve network resiliency for all Canadiansin response to this significant outage." Scott's statement also acknowledged the demands made Monday by Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne for major telecommunications companies to establish agreements for emergency roaming, mutual assistance, and a communication protocol meant to better inform the public and authorities during emergencies. "Once we are satisfied with Rogers’ response to our questions, we will determine what additional measures need to be taken," Scott said in the statement. The CRTC request for information comes after calls for a public consultation on Friday from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre. It remains unclear whether or not Rogers' responses to the CRTC's request will constitute part of a larger public consultation. In a Tuesday filing with the commission, the Competitive Network Operators of Canada (CNOC) endorsed PIAC's call for a public consultation. "CNOC is concerned with the consequences suffered by communications users during the significant blackout," CNOC wrote. "We are further concerned that our members, acting as secondary Internet Service Providers are unable to gain satisfactory compensation from Rogers for the downtime and reputational harms." CNOC also warned against non-disclosure agreements with Rogers that would mean "our ability to fully assess the situation may be hindered" and asked that the commission issue requests to all primary internet service providers in addition to Rogers, and asked that the responses be placed on the public record. "This unfortunate event highlights numerous ongoing, serious impediments facing competitors and end users, and so we look forward to working with the Commission to addressing those challenges," CNOC added, "and implementing the proposed 2022 Policy Direction which emphasizes rejuvenating and enhancing the neglected wholesale competition framework." In a research note published Tuesday, National Bank analyst Adam Shine estimated costs for Rogers to be at roughly $76 million for bill credits for the quarter, alongside $10 million in call centre costs, churn from lost customers, and added spending to retain some customers. "This may prove conservative amid momentum Rogers was initially enjoying in 2022, but some impact from the outage must be acknowledged even if the weekend outrage potentially dissipates faster and proves more innocuous than anticipated," Shine wrote. In an earlier note also published Tuesday, Shine wrote that it could have been worse. "If there's arguably a silver lining here, it's that this outage occurred ahead of more complex 5G use cases on the horizon like remote surgery and autonomous driving," Shine wrote. – Reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca, with files from Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca.

CRTC demands answers on Rogers outage

News | July 12, 2022

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CRTC demands answers on Rogers outage

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