Rogers has confirmed that it will compensate customers with five days’ worth of service following a massive national outage that began on July 8th.
“We have been listening to our customers and Canadians from across the country who have told us how significant the impacts of the outage were for them,” Rogers said in a media statement. “We know that we need to earn back their trust, and as a first step, we will be crediting our customers with the equivalent of five days service.”
Around 4:30am ET/1:30am ET on July 8th, Rogers’ entire network experienced issues, leaving millions of Canadians without access to internet, phone and other Rogers services. Further, Interac and emergency services were down while events like The Weeknd’s Toronto concert were postponed.
While Rogers said on the morning of July 9th that service was restored for “the vast majority” of people, issues have persisted for some, leading the company to now credit people for five days, up from the previously promised two days. According to Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri, the outages occurred due to a “maintenance update in our core network,” although the company hasn’t provided more information. To that point, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has ordered Rogers to provide a detailed account of the cause of the outage by July 22nd.
In the wake of the outage, Innovation, Science and Industry Minister Francois-Phillipe Champagne said on July 11th that he’s called on the “Big Three” telecoms — Rogers, Bell and Telus — to come up with a plan within 60 days to prevent similar service disruptions in the future. Specifically, he wants the carriers to reach agreements on “emergency roaming,” “mutual assistance during outages” and “a communication protocol” during telecom emergencies like the Rogers outage.
Meanwhile, a Quebec resident has launched a class-action lawsuit against Rogers, accusing the carrier of “gross negligence” while seeking $400 for each of its customers. Some people have also already received phishing scams from parties claiming to be Rogers offering them compensatory credits.
Image credit: Shutterstock
Via: CP24
