Following a statewide outage last week, Canadian internet and mobile juggernaut Rogers says it will grant credits to millions of its customers.
The company stated consumers will receive “the equivalent of five days service” in a late-Tuesday statement.
Regulators have demanded that the company explain “why” and “how” the interruption occurred.
One of Canada’s leading telecom providers, Rogers has more than 11 million customers.
The company said that it had “listened to our consumers from around the country who have told us how serious the repercussions of the outage were for them.”
“It is unacceptable that millions of Canadians recently endured a nationwide interruption of communication services. Complete halt “Francois-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s minister of industry, stated in a tweet on Monday.
To urge that they take immediate action to increase the resilience and stability of our networks, he said he had convened the executives of the major telecom firms.
The organization in charge of policing the market, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, stated that it was looking for “a full account from Rogers as to “why” and “how” this happened, as well as what steps Rogers is taking to prevent further disruptions.”
In a statement released on Tuesday, it said that the extensive network outage “disturbed Canadians and Canadian companies across the country and hindered access to services such as 911 and emergency/public alerting, as well as other vital infrastructure services.”
Last Friday, the outage started at 3:30 local time (09:30 BST) and lasted for more than 15 hours. The majority of services have now been recovered.
The disruption was triggered by “a maintenance update in our core network,” according to chief executive Tony Staffieri, “which caused some of our routers to malfunction.”
During the blackout, some bank machines were inoperable, while many emergency services phone numbers experienced problems with receiving calls. Hospitals also requested that on-call employees report to work until the problem was fixed.
People rushed to coffee shops and libraries with working Wi-Fi during the outage.
Ninety percent of the Canadian telecoms market is under the hands of three corporations: Rogers, Bell Canada, and Telus Corp.
Critics claim that the interruption proved that the nation’s telecoms sector needs greater competition.
