Rogers Communications CEO says the company is still working to fix intermittent problems that are occurring for a small number of customers after a massive outage that left the phone, Internet, television and others out of service. infrastructure for millions of customers.
“We know what the problem is, and we are now focused on ensuring that our network works with 100% stability,” Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri told BNN Bloomberg in an interview on Monday. “We are seeing some intermittent problems and we are working to overcome those that customers have, but these figures in the overall scheme of things are extremely small, but still very important.”
Stafieri said the problem was reduced to a coding error that overwhelmed the routers and eventually “caused our main gateway to close.” He said the company is working to ensure “this does not happen again.”
Millions of customers had their phone, Internet and television cut off on Friday and Saturday due to disruption, and many people were unable to contact emergency services or use their debit cards to make payments. .
The disruption exposed the vulnerability of Canadian society to telecommunications infrastructure problems and prompted the Minister of Industry of Canada to convene a meeting of telecommunications executives.
The huge disruption also came at a time when Rogers is seeking to close a $ 20 billion takeover of Shaw Communications, a deal with which Saffieri said the company is still deeply committed.
“I don’t want to take away today’s communication about our network disruption issue with Shaw’s transaction, but we remain very committed to Shaw’s transaction,” Saffieri said when asked about the deal. “This transaction has always consisted of expanding our network capabilities, gaining more redundancy and nationwide coverage that can only help in situations like this.
“Also, as part of that, we proposed ceding Freedom Wireless to another wireless operator that would create an even stronger fourth wireless operator so that networks in Canada would have even more diversity of transactions.”
Critics have said that less consolidation, not more, should be part of the solution to an over-reliance on a few big players in the telecommunications industry.
When asked if it might make sense to set aside the deal to focus entirely on resolving the outage and preventing another, Staffieri said the company can do both.
“We are capable of dealing with both issues at the same time,” he said, adding that “I don’t think they are necessarily independent of each other.”
Rogers has said it will proactively compensate customers for the outage, but some companies have said the compensation is unlikely to cover losses incurred due to the collapsed infrastructure.
Several GTA customers said Monday evening that they still could not access certain services.
In a statement, Rogers said he was aware of the remaining intermittent “challenges”.
“We continue to monitor closely to ensure stability in our network as traffic returns to normal,” the company said. “Although our networks and systems are close to operating and the vast majority of customers have restored their service, we are aware that some customers continue to experience intermittent challenges with their services. Our technical teams are working to resolve these remaining issues as soon as possible. “