This post was sparked by a Twitter conversation with @TheDanLevy who on a regular basis challenges me to think a bit more broadly. We were talking about the Rogers outage and everything surrounding it. And during this Twitter conversation, it made me think about this statement that I made about Rogers over the weekend:
So how about it Rogers? Will you come clean about what happened on Friday in detail? Will you provide a detailed action plan to remedy this with timetables? Canadians deserve complete and fulsome answers from you as this was a far reaching and catastrophic event that suggests that no Canadian should ever trust you or your services again unless you give Canadians a significant reason or reasons to trust you going forward.
After thinking about this, I concluded that there is zero chance that Rogers is ever going do any of that. I don’t believe that they’re that kind of company who would be that transparent. And they are going to hope that Canadians forget about this and turn the page when they do move on. Thus what needs to happen is that Parliament needs to step in and pull Rogers in front of them to answer questions in public. Including:
- In detail, what caused the outage on Friday?
- What specific steps is Rogers taking to address the shortcomings that caused this outage?
- When will the steps above be completed by Rogers?
- Why should Canadians trust Rogers ever again?
There’s precedence for this sort of thing. Toyota back in 2010 was “encouraged” to appear in front of a Parliamentary committee to answer questions about a number of safety issues and recalls, Including a stuck accelerator issue that was widely reported on because of four deaths in the US due to the issue. In fact, here’s the speakers notes from the Toyota side of the fence when they appeared before said committee. Thus there’s zero reason why Rogers couldn’t be “encouraged” to appear before a committee to answer questions about Friday’s outage. After all, this outage left millions without the ability to communicate, or call 9-1-1, or use their debit cards. And it cost individuals and businesses money. To me that’s as important as the safety of cars.
Now of course Parliament is in their summer recess. But that should not stop this from happening. All it takes is political will. And given that Canadians are pretty ticked off about Friday’s outage, I think the will to put Rogers under a microscope is there. The politicians just have to listen. Now there was a meeting yesterday with federal science, innovation and industry minister François-Philippe Champagne where telco execs from Bell, TELUS and Rogers were were sent away with some homework. And I would qualify that meeting as a first step in making Canada’s telco space better and more robust, there needs to me more done than that. Hearings would the right course of action in this case.
To create that political will, I would be emailing your MP with François-Philippe Champagne on carbon copy. Here’s a lookup tool that will allow you to find your MP and their email address. Please be kind as nothing will be gained by not minding your P’s and Q’s. And what Canadians have to gain is a robust and reliable telecom environment that can be relied upon by Canadians from coast to coast to coast.