What can we learn from the Rogers Outage?

Background

Rogers Communications Inc. is a Canadian communications and media company?which has nearly 11.3 million wireless subscribers and more than 2.6 million internet subscribers as of 2021.

On July 8, 2022, millions of customers reported a complete loss of access to Rogers mobile and Internet services which began on July 8th 2022 as early as 4.40 AM EDT. The services started getting restored after nearly 13 hours but has not been completely restored even after 5 days of outage.

Services Impacted

1.Flanker brands

The outage has also caused Rogers’ flanker brands, Chatr and Fido, to go offline. The situation isn’t surprising given the networks are run by Rogers.

2.Emergency services

Rogers customers were also having difficulty contacting 9-1-1which is the emergency phone service. Guelph Police Services also noted its non-emergency phone lines were impacted by the outage.

3.ISPs

Some internet service providers (ISPs) buy services from larger carriers at wholesale, and companies that do business with Rogers were also impacted.

4.Interac

The outage caused Interac’s services to go offline. This means debit and e-transfer services weren’t available, both online and at checkout, for organizations using Rogers’ network which impacted small and medium Retailers greatly.

5.Transit

GO Transit said some parts of their system was affected by the outage. The transit agency said fares could not be purchased using debit or credit cards. E-tickets were also unavailable. Toronto’s bike sharing system was also down.

6.The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)

The government watchdog said its phone lines are down but its website is still online.

7.Canadian Blood Services

Donating blood or plasma or looking to book an appointment with the Canadian Blood Services was all paused. The organization asked people to call them for assistance.

8.Service Canada

ServiceCanada mentioned the outage impacted its passport services.

9.ArriveCAN

The Canada Border Service Agency said some travellers won’t be able to complete submissions on ArriveCAN due to the outage. Impacted travellers will have to fill out the Traveller Contact Information Form before they arrive at the border.

10.CRA accounts

Canada’s Revenue Agency tweeted that users with multi-factor authentication set up on Rogers’ network will have trouble getting into their accounts.

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What can Customers do

Diversify the companies one takes services from. Use a different network for cellphone vs home internet for different family members.

What the Federal Government needs to do

1)??Enforce emergency roaming, mutual assistance during outages and build out a communication protocol to inform the customers and authorities in a better manner during such emergencies.

2)??Rogers is one of Canada’s three big national cellphone carriers, alongside Telus and Bell. Government should work on allowing other carriers in the market to disrupt this monopoly and introduce a competitive cell-phone service market.

What the Company needs to do

1)??Acknowledge the mistake timely: Rogers President and CEO Tony Staffieri issued an apology via Twitter about 17 hours after the start of the incident, acknowledging the issue to the public after a day of system outage.

2)?Media training should be a part of the training provided to the leadership roles like CEO, etc.

3)?A public relation plan needs to be in place in situations like these.