A public outcry yesterday prompted the House of Commons industry committee to convene emergency hearings on a Rogers Communications blackout that affected customers nationwide. The committee will meet Friday to schedule testimony on why service to some twelve million Rogers subscribers was disrupted for days..“This is deeply upsetting and unacceptable,” New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh said in a statement. “We will be looking at bringing Rogers, Interac and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne to committee to figure out what happened.”.According to Blacklock's Reporter, the blackout began last Friday and continued up to 72 hours in some municipalities. The shutdown of Rogers Communications closed federal offices, ATMs and 911 emergency call service to police and paramedics, and disrupted debit card transactions at retailers nationwide..Rogers in a July 9 statement blamed the blackout on routine maintenance gone awry. The blackout was “a network system failure following a maintenance update in our core network which caused some of our routers to malfunction,” said a company statement..The Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission yesterday demanded a formal explanation but threatened no sanctions. “The CRTC is requesting a detailed account from Rogers as to why and how this happened as well as what measures Rogers is putting in place to prevent future outages,” wrote the Commission..“We take the safety, security and wellness of Canadians very seriously.”.Members of the industry committee earlier criticized Rogers and its main rivals Bell, Telus and Shaw Communications Inc. of Calgary for poor service at high cost. “Frankly the status quo is unacceptable,” Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre (Carleton, Ont.) told reporters March 16, 2021..“We don’t have a free market in telecommunications,” said Poilievre. “We have a protected, regulated oligarchy, a small group of players who are protected by a regulatory regime largely controlled out of Ottawa to serve our population.”.“Let’s be honest,” said Poilievre. “This model has not particularly performed well. We have among the highest prices and among the poorest coverage in the developed world.”.Canadians last year paid an average $2,124 a year for telecom services according to a CRTC Communications Monitoring Report. Charges averaged $828 for internet, $588 for mobile services, $408 for telephone landlines and $300 for cable TV..“There is no reason why we should have to pay the highest prices in the world and there’s no reason why we should accept that rural and remote communities don’t get good, high speed service,” said Poilievre. “There are communities in Ottawa, in the nation’s capital, that don’t get good high speed service.”
