People use public Wi-Fi outside a Starbucks cafe in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, July 8, 2022. (Photo by Zou Zheng/Xinhua)
"Events of this magnitude paralysing portions of our country's economy and jeopardizing the safety of Canadians are simply unacceptable," the CRTC said. "Once we are satisfied with Rogers' response to our questions, we will determine what additional measures need to be taken."
OTTAWA, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) on Tuesday ordered Rogers Communications Canada Inc. (Rogers) to respond to detailed questions and provide a comprehensive explanation regarding the national service outage millions of Canadians experienced on Friday.
In a statement issued by Ian Scott, chairperson and CEO of the CRTC, the telecom regulator is requesting a detailed account from Rogers as to "why" and "how" this happened, as well as what measures Rogers is putting in place to prevent future outages.
The widespread network outage not only disrupted Canadians and Canadian businesses across the country, it prevented access to services such as 9-1-1 and emergency/public alerting, as well as other critical infrastructure services, the statement said.
"We are responsible for ensuring that Canadians have access at all times to a reliable and efficient communications system," said Scott, adding that this is the first step the CRTC is taking to improve network resiliency for all Canadians in response to this significant outage.
"Events of this magnitude paralysing portions of our country's economy and jeopardizing the safety of Canadians are simply unacceptable," Scott said. "Once we are satisfied with Rogers' response to our questions, we will determine what additional measures need to be taken."
According to the statement, Rogers has until July 22 to provide its responses.
CEOs of the leading telecom companies met with Innovation, Science and Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne on Monday and reached agreements on emergency roaming, mutual assistance during outages, as well as a communication protocol to better inform the public and authorities during telecommunications emergencies. ■