The Canadian government has ordered an investigation into Rogers’ nearly 19-hour outage and called on telecommunications companies to reach an agreement within 60 days on how to develop communication protocols to keep people better informed.
The outage, which disrupted services from flights to bank and emergency calls, has cast doubt on Rogers’ CA$15.4 billion acquisition of Shaw Communications, which traders said was down from 88 per cent a week ago to about 62 per cent on Monday.
Following the outage, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne met with the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of Rogers, BCE (Bell Canada Enterprises) and Telus, the three telecommunications companies that control about 90 per cent of the Canadian telecommunications market.
Champagne, whose department is responsible for approving the takeover, said it would not allow wholesale transfer of licenses from Shaw to Rogers as part of the deal.
Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri expressed the company’s determination to seal the deal.
“We very much remain committed to the Shaw transaction. That transaction has always been about expanding our network capabilities, attaining more redundancy and coverage across the nation that can only help in situations like this,” Staffieri said.
The sources for this piece include an article in Reuters.