TORONTO — Rogers Communications Inc. says it was unable to switch customers to competing carriers during the unprecedented service outage earlier this month despite offers of assistance from Bell and Telus.
In a filing with the federal regulator late Friday, the telecommunications giant also says it failed to shut down its radio access network, which would have automatically connected customers to another carrier for 911 calls.
The new details offer insight into the options Rogers considered during the widespread outage that left millions of customers across Canada without mobile, landline and Internet service on July 8.
The company says it was unable to route most 911 calls or provide four emergency alerts during the service outage.
Rogers says that while competitors offered support during the outage, it was unable to switch customers to a rival carrier.
He says doing so would have required access to parts of his system that were down during the outage.
Competing networks, Rogers said in the filing, would not have been able to handle the sudden extra volume of wireless customers, which the company pegged at more than 10.2 million.
It said the related increase in voice and data traffic could have hampered operations on other carriers’ networks.
Meanwhile, Rogers considered shutting down its radio access network during the outage, which would have automatically connected customers to another carrier for 911 calls. But once again, the company said the outage which disabled its central system made such a shutdown impossible.
As a result, Rogers said its radio access network remained in service and many customer phones were not automatically trying to connect to another network.
While the number of failed 911 calls is unknown, the company said it was able to route “thousands” of calls to 911 during intermittent service on its network, while some Rogers customers were able to make emergency calls through the Bell or Telus networks.
Much of the specific information Rogers submitted to the Canadian Telecommunications and Radio-television Commission was redacted from the document for security and competition reasons.
Rogers also said four emergency alerts, all issued in Saskatchewan, did not reach customers during the outage.
He said one RCMP alert was related to a dangerous person while three were tornado warnings issued by Environment Canada.