Rogers Communications says it was unable to route calls from its customers through its competitors during the recent major outage that affected its service earlier this month, despite offers of assistance from Bell and Telus.
In a brief presented Friday evening to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the telecommunications giant also indicates that it was unable to close access to its radio network, which could have allowed customers to call 911 through another provider.
This information provides insight into the solutions Rogers considered during the widespread outage that crippled the company’s networks and affected millions of customers across Canada.
If it could not route its customers’ calls via its competitors, it was because certain parts of the central system that would have made it possible to do so were affected by the outage. This also explains why it was impossible for him to close access to the radio network.
Rogers argues that its competitors would have been unable to deal with the sudden arrival of several million wireless subscribers. They would have been overwhelmed by the arrival of a large volume of calls and data transfers.
The company says it was able to route “thousands” of calls to 911 during the outage. It is unknown how many customers were unable to reach the emergency call service.
Rogers customers placed emergency calls using Bell or Telus networks.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) had given Rogers until Friday to explain the cause of the outage, the extent of the problem and the steps taken to prevent a similar problem from happening again.
Much of the specific information given to the CRTC has been redacted for security and competition purposes.
Rogers also indicates that four alert messages, all in Saskatchewan, could not be broadcast during the outage. One was an RCMP warning of a dangerous person on the loose and the other three were an Environment Canada warning of a tornado.