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Telecom aims to separate wireless and Internet, switch 911 calls with other carriers
Posted: 6 hours ago Last updated: 35 minutes ago
Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri is seen in Toronto in April 2013. (Matthew Sherwood/The Canadian Press)
Rogers Communications on Sunday announced new steps it will take to prevent a repeat of what happened during a nationwide service outage on July 8.
In a letter to customers, CEO Tony Staffieri outlined the company’s “enhanced reliability plan” in response to the outage, which left millions in Canada without cellphone and Internet service, some for days. and prompted questions and concerns from the federal government and regulators.
About 911 calls, which were disrupted in many parts of the country during the outage, he said Rogers is working on a formal agreement with competitors “to switch 911 calls to each other’s networks automatically , even in the event of an interruption in the network of any operator.”
Rogers has said on its website that customers can call 911 without a SIM card at any time, but it’s unclear whether that would have worked during the outage.
As for wireless and Internet, Saffieri promised that the company will “physically” separate those services to create an “always-on” network so that the customer does not experience outages for both at the same time, which happened in many on July 8.
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Monday, July 11: The Canadian economy and everyday life are tied to our communications networks, and when they go down, as Rogers did for much of the day Friday, there is no universal Plan B that remains widely used and vital — online services. We will discuss the need for a backup plan. 45:48
Saffieri also said the company will invest $10 billion over the next three years in things like monitoring, testing and artificial intelligence.
“I know that only through these actions can we begin to restore your trust in Rogers and regain your confidence,” Saffieri said.
The letter to customers comes two days after the release of a letter Rogers sent to Canada’s broadcasting regulator detailing the cause and immediate consequences of the service outage.
Rogers told the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) that coding an upgrade to his network removed a routing filter that “allowed every possible route to the Internet to go through the routers,” which flooded and overflowed the central network. causing it to stop processing Internet traffic altogether.
The letter met a CRTC deadline for Rogers to answer questions about the outage, but has many redactions where Rogers is believed to have offered more specific details.
On Monday, Rogers officials and a host of other stakeholders will appear before a parliamentary committee in Ottawa to explain more about the cause of the outage and outline the steps they are taking to make sure it doesn’t happen again.