François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, said on Friday the federal government is in talks with the ‘Big 3’ and everyone is in “solution mode.”
Rogers saw a devastating network outage that affected millions of Canadians on Friday and also well into Saturday.
Champagne was quick to announce he was in talks with Rogers about trying to bring connectivity back online for mobile and internet users.
He later followed up to say, “Spoke to the CEO of Rogers. Shared with him the frustration of millions of Canadians.” The minister added, “also spoke [with] the CEOs of both Bell and Telus. Everyone is in solution mode, willing to help.”
According to Champagne, “this unacceptable situation is why quality, diversity [and] reliability are key to our telecom network.”
Again, it’s unclear what the minister will actually do to prevent the shutdown of the INTERAC network that relies on Rogers and other services as well. This latest tweet is now “pinned” on the minister’s Twitter account, seemingly stuck to show Canadians just how much he cares.
Spoke to the CEO of Rogers. Shared with him the frustration of millions of Canadians.
Also spoke w/ the CEOs of both Bell and Telus. Everyone is in solution mode, willing to help.
This unacceptable situation is why quality, diversity & reliability are key to our telecom network
— François-Philippe Champagne (FPC) 🇨🇦 (@FP_Champagne) July 8, 2022
Rogers said on Saturday it discovered the root cause of the network outage: a maintenance update.
“We know how much our customers rely on our networks and I sincerely apologize. We’re particularly troubled that some customers could not reach emergency services and we are addressing the issue as an urgent priority,” said Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri in a statement.
Last April, when Rogers suffered another daylong outage, the company blamed the cause on an Ericsson update.
For now, rivals Telus and Bell appear to have a better grasp on their network, as neither company has yet to experience a major network shutdown like Rogers that crippled internet, cellphones, emergency services, banking payments and more.
