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Feds demand Canada’s telecom giants formalize deal to work together during outages

The national outage of Rogers services is unacceptable. That’s according to Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, François-Philippe Champagne. 

Friday’s outage left millions of people without internet, cell, and landline services and disrupted the ability to call 9-1-1.  The Interac system was crippled throughout the country, causing businesses only to take cash or credit. 

In 60 days, Champagne wants to see a formal agreement between Canada’s big three telecom companies.  That will include a plan to improve the time it takes to recover from an outage of that magnitude.

“The first thing that I want the formal agreement to cover is mutual assistance during outages, the second thing is emergency roaming, particularly during the time of emergencies like we have seen, and [third is] communications protocol to better inform the public and authorities during these times of crisis,” Champagne said.

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He says the outage, caused by a systems failure after a maintenance upgrade, will be investigated by the CRTC. 

Meanwhile, a class-action lawsuit has been filed by a Quebec Rogers customer seeking 400-dollars-worth of compensation for each customer affected by Friday’s outage. 

A judge has yet to sign off on the suit.

***With files from Wendy Gray and Mo Fahim

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