CRTC to Conduct ‘Forensic-Level’ Review of Rogers Communications Following 2022 Blackout

The Rogers Communications Inc. sign at the company's headquarters in Toronto, in a file photo. (The Canadian Press/Aaron Vincent Elkaim)

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) will conduct a “forensic level technical review” of the Rogers Communications Inc. blackout in July 2022 that affected millions of Canadians and left many without internet access and ability to make phone calls for days.

“The CRTC is seeking to evaluate the resiliency of Rogers’ telecommunications network architecture and business management processes in relation to causes of the July 8, 2022 outage,” the commission wrote in a notice to contractors obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter.

The notice says the CRTC will also evaluate whether the “changes proposed by Rogers in response to this network outage are sufficient to make the network more resilient or if Rogers requires additional specific measures to prevent major outages in the future.”

“This network outage left more than 10 million customers of Rogers without connectivity all over Canada,” the commission wrote, adding that even customers of other telecom networks, along with businesses and financial institutions that rely on Rogers for network connectivity, were also affected.

The network outage began on the morning of July 8, 2022, and Rogers said it had resolved most of the network blackouts by the morning of July 9. Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri attributed the nationwide outage to a “network system failure” followed a maintenance update to its core network.

The company didn’t disclose how many customers were affected in total.

In 2021, Rogers had over 11 million wireless subscribers and close to 3 million internet subscribers.

Measures

As a measure in response to the Rogers nationwide network blackout, Canada’s major telecom companies reached a formal agreement in September 2022 to ensure emergency roaming in the case of another major blackout.

Minister of Innovation Francois-Philippe Champagne also said the agreement includes a commitment by companies to provide “clear and timely communications to keep Canadians and appropriate authorities informed about response and restoration during major network outages.”

Champagne also said at the time that he was giving the Canadian Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee six months to come up with further measures that would ensure greater telecom network reliability across Canada.

“We’re not going to rest. Trust me. We’re going to hold them accountable and take any measures we can to strengthen resiliency,” Champagne said on Sept. 7, 2022.

Rogers is currently in the midst of a deal that would see it acquire rival Canadian telecom company Shaw Communications in a buyout worth $26 billion.

However, the deal still requires Champagne’s approval if it is to go through, and the minister said in February that he is still considering whether or not he will allow it.

“In due course,” he told reporters in Ottawa on Feb. 17 when asked when he will make his decision.

“I’m not bound by any artificial deadline,” he said. “I’m the regulator. It’s going to come whenever it’s going to come.”

Andrew Chen and The Canadian Press contributed to this report.