Canadian telecommunications companies will have to agree by the end of the summer on a “mutual assistance” protocol when one of them suffers a major outage, Minister François-Philippe Champagne told the outlet. of a meeting with industry leaders on Monday afternoon.
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Mr Champagne reiterated to Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri during the meeting that the situation created by the major outage last Friday was “unacceptable, period”, and that the millions of customers affected will have to be compensated “proactively”. .
The Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry also announced that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) will conduct an investigation into the causes of the outage in addition to making recommendations to the government on the best practices to adopt.
“My role today was to tell them what I expect from [Rogers]. I told them clearly and unequivocally speaking on behalf of Canadians and millions of Rogers customers and I think the message was heard,” he told the media.
“Resilience” objective
The Minister’s objective is to improve the “resilience” of the Canadian network by implementing an action plan in the event of a major outage. Telecoms have 60 days to reach an agreement.
This plan will have to include an offer for an emergency roaming service, since as Mr. Champagne pointed out, the Rogers outage even prevented calls to emergency services like 911.
In the event of a major outage, a company’s customers could have their phones automatically connect to another network, the minister hinted.
The latter finally insisted on having a clear communication protocol in place between companies and customers in the event of an outage, as many customers complained about the lack of communication from Rogers last Friday.
Executives from TELUS, Videotron, Bell, Shaw, SaskTel and Eastlink also took part in the minister’s conference call, which lasted just over an hour.
A Montreal law firm has launched a class action lawsuit against Rogers not only for inconvenience caused by the outage, but also for false advertising, with the Toronto-based company claiming to be “the most reliable network in the country”.
The Rogers outage affected a range of services across the country for a minimum of twelve hours, with service only beginning to resume late Friday evening. The company and its subsidiaries Fido and Chatr together have nearly 15 million customers for wireless services alone.
Another impact of the outage: transactions between thousands of businesses and their potential customers were suddenly made impossible.
