System failure causes network outage: Canadian telco | World News

Toronto: The major telecommunications outage affecting more than 10 million Canadians and several services, including government agencies, was due to a network system failure and was not related to the cyberattack.

Rogers Communications, which discovered its service was down on Friday morning and was down for nearly 24 hours, issued a statement Saturday saying “a network system failure following a maintenance update to our core network caused some of our routers to fail on Friday. Early in the morning.”

While there has been speculation that the nationwide blackout may have been due to a cyberattack, Canadian Public Safety Minister Marco Mendocino has dismissed that claim.

In a statement, Rogers President and CEO Tony Staffery said: “We know how much our customers rely on our network, and I sincerely apologize. We are particularly concerned that some customers will not be able to access emergency services, and we are moving This issue is addressed as a matter of urgency.”

The company also promises to “proactively credit all customers automatically” during outages.

Rogers accounts for nearly one-third of Canada’s telecommunications services sector. It dominates Canada’s telecommunications industry with two other major companies, Bell Canada Enterprises and Telus Communications, with a market share of nearly 90%. Friday’s blackout led critics of the situation to call for greater competition in the industry.

The nationwide outage of the Rogers Network began around 4:30 a.m. ET Friday, affecting not only cellphone users or home or business internet users, but also taking some government services offline. Transportation, schools, hospitals, debit card payments were adversely affected.

That could lead to scrutiny in Canada’s parliament as MPs call for such action, and at the national level, Minister for Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne tweeted on Friday This “unacceptable situation is why quality, variety and reliability are key to our telecommunications network”, said the spokesman.