Rogers chairman and chief executive Tony Staffieri and chief information and technology officer Ron McKenzie are waiting to appear before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology. Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Members of Parliament debated the CEO of Rogers Communications Inc. on Monday. RCI-BT’s Tony Saffieri on the widespread outage that left millions of customers without wireless, internet and home phone service earlier this month, as the company sought to reassure Ottawa that it is taking steps to build resilience of your network.
Mr. Staffieri and the company’s newly appointed chief technology officer, Ron McKenzie, faced harsh questions and criticism during a public hearing about what regulators described as an unprecedented disruption.
The hearing was held by the House of Commons industry and technology committee, which is made up of MPs from the four main federal parties. It was the first public appearance of Mr. McKenzie after taking over as chief technology officer from Jorge Fernandes last week.
Ian Scott, chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), called the company’s delayed communication with its customers during the July 8 outage “unacceptable,” while Minister Industry, François-Philippe Champagne, criticized Mr. Staffieri for no contact. To him.
How a coding error caused a Rogers outage that left millions without service
“It shouldn’t be up to the minister to go after the CEO of a major telecommunication in Canada when something like this happens; it should be more the other way around,” said Mr. Champagne, who was in Tokyo, Japan, on government business at the time of the outage.
It took the Toronto-based telco about four hours to acknowledge the situation on social media and all day to resolve the outage, though intermittent problems continued throughout the weekend.
The problem began shortly before 5 a.m. EST, when a coding error was introduced that overwhelmed the company’s routers, causing the network’s core to shut down. The service outage left Rogers customers unable to call 911 or receive emergency alerts, and affected Interac’s debit system, resulting in lost sales for many businesses.
Mr. Champagne said it was first informed of the outage on the afternoon of July 8, Tokyo time. “A few hours later, I received an update that the outage now appeared to be more severe than originally anticipated. I immediately picked up the phone, not only to contact the CEO of Rogers, but also the advisors representatives from TELUS and Bell to see how they could help.”
Mr. Staffieri said he regrets not reaching out to government officials sooner. “We were focused on the solution and getting our customers up and running. But still, those communications should have happened earlier for a major player like the government,” he said.
Mr. Staffieri has pledged to make changes and investments to avoid similar outages in the future, including separating the wireless and wireline cores of the telecommunications network, a move he said will cost at least $250 million.
“To be honest, this extra layer of protection is going to be expensive,” said Mr. Staffieri to the committee, “but we know it’s the right thing to do.”
Like many of its peers, Rogers currently processes all voice, wireless data, Internet and television traffic through a common network core, which is essentially the brain of the network. Separating the wireless and wired networks will ensure that a similar outage doesn’t bring down all of the company’s services simultaneously, Rogers executives explained.
The company has also pledged to invest more in testing, monitoring and artificial intelligence to improve the reliability of its networks.
Monday’s hearing came amid a regulatory review of Rogers’ controversial $26 billion takeover of Shaw Communications Inc. The Competition Office is trying to block the merger, arguing it will lead to poor service and higher prices for mobile phone customers. Rogers has reached an agreement to sell Shaw’s Freedom Mobile to Quebecor Inc. for $2.85 billion to try to address these concerns.
Consumer advocates and telecom researchers who appeared before the committee on Monday urged regulators to reject the merger of Canada’s two largest cable networks, arguing that the disruption has shown the pitfalls of having too few competitors in the sector. Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith pressed Mr. Saffieri on whether the takeover is dead, while Tory MP Tracy Gray questioned whether Mr. Saffieri should keep his job.
“I’m responsible for making sure this doesn’t happen again,” said Mr. Staffieri in response to Ms. Gray. He also told the committee that the merger with Shaw would accelerate Rogers’ efforts to separate its network cores.
“It is our intention to maintain the Shaw cable network as independent,” said Mr. staff Mr. Staffieri said the Toronto-based telco would combine its own cable network with Shaw’s and keep that combined cable network separate from Rogers’ wireless network.
“In terms of our plan, the Shaw transaction will allow us to execute that ability to separate them [networks] in half the time it would otherwise,” he said.
The ministry of Mr. Champagne is one of two regulatory bodies still reviewing the acquisition. Mr. Champagne has instructed Canada’s wireless carriers to implement a formal framework to help each other during network outages, offer customers emergency roaming on their networks and follow a communications protocol to ensure consumers are informed
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