Telecommunications | You are paying dearly for a network that has crashed

You pay a lot for your wireless phone plan.

Except that Canada is a big country and we have secure and reliable networks, usually retorts the “Big 3” of telecoms (Rogers, Bell and Telus), which holds 89% of the market for wireless plans.

The argument of network reliability no longer holds up since the one-day outage of Rogers’ wireless network on July 8th.

Due to an error in the network update coding, Rogers’ 10 million wireless customers could no longer call or text frantically.

But there is (still) more problematic.

They could no longer reach the 911 emergency service with their cordless telephone. The Interac banking network no longer worked at several financial institutions. The app ArriveCAN was blocked. Hospitals in Toronto were no longer able to reach their doctors.

We did two things that day.

First: telecom networks occupy a huge place in our lives.

Second: the telecom giants have been trusted for too long in terms of the reliability of their networks, without monitoring them too much.

It is an illusion to think that there will never again be failures on a wireless network. But you can reduce the risk of a breakdown to a minimum and the potential damage to a minimum.

How to do ? If only there was an easy solution. This is not the case.

The Trudeau government has given the “Big 3” two months to find a formal cooperation agreement. In the event of an outage, competitors “would be forced to make their networks roaming.” It’s a good idea that needs to be implemented. But in practice, that would not have solved the problem because Bell and Telus would not have had the capacity to accommodate 10 million customers at once, specifies Rogers.

However, it is incredible that such an agreement is not already in place. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) will have to get involved in all this (it has already begun its investigation).

That’s not all.

If 911 calls stopped working with Rogers on July 8, it’s not just because of Rogers. It is also the fault of… Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau.

Since 2011, police chiefs have been suggesting that the federal government set up a new network solely for public safety. Police departments, civil security services and 911 would go through this network instead of the “Big 3”.

The United States has had such a parallel network since 2012. If there is an outage at Verizon or AT&T, the 911 and police department networks continue to operate.

Enough waiting! Ottawa must now create its own Public Safety Broadband Network, as it has been asked to do for a decade.

This failure of Rogers must also serve as a warning in terms of competition.

Among eight comparable countries (the G7 and Australia), Canada is the second or third where you pay the most, depending on the type of plan. There is not enough competition, which keeps prices higher.

Ways must be found to increase competition, which is (even more) urgent in English Canada, but also in Quebec, where Cogeco is eager to become the fifth player.

Life does things funny sometimes. As it deals with the aftermath of its outage, Rogers tries to convince the Competition Bureau and the Trudeau government that it should be allowed to buy Shaw, a major regional player in Western Canada.

Allowing this transaction is a do-nothing. If Ottawa agrees to this transaction, it must put in place the conditions so that Quebecor – which has an agreement to buy part of Shaw’s wireless services – can truly establish itself as the long-awaited fourth national player.