Outside firm reviewing 2022 Rogers outage at CRTC’s request. What we know
Global News
A spokesperson with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission says engineering consulting firm Xona Partners is carrying out the review.
Canada’s telecom regulator says it will release a report being carried out by an external company into the 2022 Rogers outage “in due course.”
A spokesperson with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) told Global News Thursday that engineering consulting firm Xona Partners is carrying out the review.
“The CRTC is continuing its investigation into the widespread outage that affected Rogers Communications’ network in July 2022,” they said.
“The consulting firm’s review is still ongoing. The CRTC will review the firm’s findings and release the report to inform Canadians in due course.”
The spokesperson added they expect to receive the report around the end of October.
In July 2022, a major Rogers network outage left more than 12 million mobile and internet customers without service for upwards of 15 hours. The outage impacted not only Canadians working from home, but also Interac payments, health care and law enforcement.
Rogers has said the outage was due to a network system failure after a maintenance outage, but nevertheless, it placed a spotlight on the vulnerability of Canada’s internet and cellphone network, which is dominated by three major players.
In the immediate aftermath, Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne gave Rogers and other major telecommunications companies 60 days to come up with a joint crisis plan in case of future outages.