ANALYSIS: Rogers’ Summer Outage—The Future of Telecommunications in Canada

Mark Blinch/Reuters via The Globe and Mail

Ten million Rogers Communications customers awoke on July 8 to find their internet and cell service down. TVs, home phones, cell phones, Interac debit transactions, and other internet-related commodities were affected.

This event was due to a network system update from Rogers that did not go as planned. The same day as the outage, Rogers installed a new network system into a live environment, which suffered a coding error in the sixth stage of a seven-stage network system that Rogers created.

According to Ron McKenzie, the Chief Technology and Information Officer at Rogers, the five initial stages had no errors in their systems, but the sixth one had an “unprecedented error.” McKenzie stated that the error happened in the core network, which can be considered the brain of the networks.

This made it difficult to reboot the system, as it could not be contained in a specific location. Customers connected to the wireless and wired networks were affected because the outage affected the core gateways, which caused both to go down.

The outage lasted for over 15 hours, obstructing the daily lives of the millions of Rogers customers. Even after Rogers confirmed the network was back online, some citizens had no service. For these reasons, Rogers offered a five-day credit to their customers. Initially, this was a two-day credit, but due to the long duration of no network for some citizens across Canada, they extended it to a five-day credit.

Rogers had a similar outage on Apr. 19 in 2021, but it was not as far-reaching as July’s outage, as it only affected wireless calls, short message services, and data services. That outage lasted under twelve hours. The cause was because of an issue with a software update.

Numerous systems were down due to the outage on July 8, making it difficult for Canadians to complete many of their daily tasks. Retailers and restaurants could not accept credit cards or debit cards. Fans of The Weeknd were upset as the pop star announced that his concert in Toronto had to be cancelled due to the outage.

In response to the outage, Rogers is working on splitting networks so that if one network is down, there is another alternative. The network upgrades are estimated to cost the company $250 million.

Additionally, they are working with competitors to establish a backup alternative in case the other two fail. One of Rogers’ networks will be wired and the other will be wireless; so if one were to shut down, the other network could be replaced. If both went down, a different telecommunications company’s network can assist in a matter of seconds.

In July, employees at Rogers didn’t suspect the outage to be due to an error in the code right away; they believed it was a cyberattack. This assumption was another factor in the delay in their message to Canadians, according to Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri, in testimony with the House of Commons Industry Committee.

Canadians were frustrated as most were trying to contact Rogers about the outage, but no response came for a while. Staffieri claimed in the same testimony that Rogers’ Emergency Response Team had a message for their customers when the outage was first confronted. However, they were not able to send out the message because the networks were down. What caused the delay was alternatives being made to keep Canadians informed on what was happening and what actions Rogers was taking to fix it.

Rogers’ customers are worried that another outage will happen in the future, as some Canadians could not call 911 or make emergency calls. Despite the offer of assistance from other competitors like Bell and Telus, Rogers was unable to transfer calls under their networks during the outage. Staffieri stated that this won’t happen again in the future, as they are working on a memorandum of understanding that will better prepare the company for any future outages.

Rogers plans to spend $10 billion on strengthening its networks over the next three years. This will enable them to serve the long-term interests of Canadians, Staffieri stated to the House of Commons.

Rogers is still expected to spend $26 billion on a merger with Shaw.

On Mar. 15, 2021, Rogers and Shaw announced a merger that will create the second-largest cellular and cable operator in Canada and will aid in the investment of 5G networks as stated by Shaw and Rogers. According to a statement from the Competition Bureau of Canada, Rogers and Shaw will also work to supply wireline internet services to consumers and small businesses.

For customers of Shaw concerned about what this merger may look like, an article by Ben Klass for the Policy Options Politics writes that customers of Shaw would not necessarily be affected by this merger as Rogers will only be taking over Shaw’s former markets.

In a statement released by Rogers, Shaw will be bought from Rogers for $26 billion. $20 billion of that money comes from buying Class A and B shares of Shaw, which costs $40.50 per share in cash. Class A shares include voting rights for shareholders whereas Class B do not. The rest of the $6 billion comes from the debt owed by Shaw.

Staffieri is confident about this merger despite the outage. Though this may assure Rogers and Shaw customers, the Competition Bureau is carefully looking over this merger to see if this alternate network may be provided.

In a statement by the Competition Bureau, the organization says that they are investigating whether the proposed merger would be beneficial to consumers and if it will stop or weaken the competition between services given by companies including mobile wireless, wireline, and broadcasting services. The Bureau must also consider if this merger will be likely to result in a future outage.

Rogers and Shaw already have the go-ahead from the shareholders of Shaw and the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta, and from the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), according to a news release from Rogers in July.