Canada's Rogers To Credit Customers 5 Days Service

Rogers Communications Inc will be crediting customers with the equivalent of five days service, it said on Tuesday after the Canadian telecoms operator suffered a major outage that paralyzed the country's banking and emergency services last week, reports Reuters.

Rogers has come under pressure from Canadian government, customers and politicians over last Friday's unprecedented glitch that lasted 19 hours. On Tuesday, the telecoms regulator ordered Rogers to respond within ten days to its questions about the network outage that impacted millions of Canadians.

"We know that we need to earn back their trust, and as a first step, we will be crediting our customers with the equivalent of five days service," Rogers said in a statement late on Tuesday.

Rogers, which has about 10 million wireless subscribers and 2.25 million retail internet subscribers, would have to credit between C$65 million to C$75 million to customers in the third quarter due to the outage, Scotiabank estimated in a note on Monday.

The company reported a net income of C$1.56 billion in 2021.

The glitch, which also disrupted flights, has cast doubt over Rogers' C$20 billion ($15.4 billion) takeover of Shaw Communications. That deal has been blocked by the antitrust agency saying it would lessen competition in the country, where customers pay among the highest telecom bills in the world.

Rogers needs to provide a detailed account as to "why" and "how" the outage happened, and what measures the company is putting in place to prevent future outages, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said in a statement.