The 2022 Rogers outage that left 12 million people without wireless and hard-wired services was caused by human error and made worse by management and system “deficiencies,” says an independent review conducted for Canada’s telecommunications regulator.
The 26-hour outage started early in the early morning of July 8 and left individuals and businesses without access to their mobile, home phone, internet and 911 services.
Staff at Rogers caused the shutdown, the report says, by removing a control filter that directed information to its appropriate destination.
Without the filter in place, a flood of information was sent into Rogers’ core network, overloading and crashing the system within minutes of the control filter being removed.
Designating risks in phase six as “low” meant Rogers’ staff could avoid additional levels of scrutiny and approvals as the upgrade proceeded, even though doing so “contravenes industry norms,” the report says.
In Ontario the only other options are Cogeco (just as bad) and Teksavvy. Literally every other independent ISP has been bought or put out of business by Bell or Rogers.
Much of TekSavvy’s infrastructure is last mile stuff and they resell service from Bell, Rogers and Cogeco, so in many places they still aren’t an option if you’re looking to avoid the major networks. They have put some of their own fibre in some places though and have their own wireless service in some places, but as far as I know their main business is still piggybacking off of the major providers.
Personally, I’ll take that deal just to avoid the direct rogers/bell customer service experience, but my god we need more options.