The chief executive officer (CEO) of Rogers Communications (RCI) has promised to fix the
telecommunication company’s network after a national outage left 12 million people without
access to wireless internet.
Facing questions from a parliamentary committee in Ottawa, Tony Staffieri said that Rogers will
spend $250 million to separate its wireless and wireline networks following the July 8 outage
that saw the company’s internet service shutdown for nearly 24 hours.
The outage negatively impacted emergency services, banks, government offices and private
sector businesses, as well as individual Canadians. Separating the networks will help make
them stronger, Staffieri said.
The parliamentary committee is seeking answers to the cause of the network failure, and
has ordered Canadian telecom companies to develop plans to ensure that if one wireless
provider suffers a network problem, 9-1-1 calls and other emergency services will remain
operational.
The network incident has thrown into doubt Rogers proposed $20 billion acquisition of rival
telecom company Shaw Communications (SJR), which still needs approval from federal
regulators.
Staffieri said immediately after the network outage that Rogers will invest $10 billion over the
next three years to bolster network reliability.
Rogers’ stock is down 1% year-to-date at $60.27 per share.
