OTTAWA – Rogers has responded to several requests for more information from its July 22 report to the CRTC on its recent nationwide outage to be disclosed, saying it “erred on the side of caution” when determining what information to disclose to the public in the first place due to time constraints.
Rogers has provided what it says amounts to an additional seven pages of information, including more on what happened and the steps the company is taking to help prevent another outage.
The telecom has now disclosed 2.92 million wireline customers (including consumers, businesses, TPIA, etc.), were impacted by the outage, as well as 10.24 million wireless customers (including postpaid, prepaid, wholesale, etc.).
Rogers further disclosed its priority sequence for restoring service, indicating it prioritized wireless services first, followed by wireline, critical care services (including police, hospitals and airports), major infrastructure/providers as well as major business customers, home Internet services, home video services and lastly, smart home monitoring.
While there is a fair amount of information newly made public by Rogers, the telecom has maintained certain information, including information that was specifically requested be made public, should be kept confidential.
Rogers explained it “purposely provided a detailed overview of the incident in order for the public to understand what occurred and why,” and argued further specificity would not help the public but would help malicious actors wanting to disrupt the company’s networks.
“Similarly, disclosure of 9-1-1 calling statistics and more detailed information on the infrastructure used by Rogers for alerts and wireless calls can be used by fraudulent actors to undermine the security of Rogers’ network infrastructure, including for purposes of telephony denial-of-service (TDoS) and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks to flood the Rogers’ network,” Rogers’ response reads.
“Rogers had initially considered providing this information until it was explained that the calling statistics could be helpful in disrupting our network. We then redacted those sections. The material public harm that would result from these kinds of attacks outweighs any public interest in disclosure of this additional information,” the company argued.
With regards specifically to a request from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) for more information to better enable customers to assess the compensation they were offered, Rogers argued “this is not an appropriate forum to consider compensation.”
Rogers also addressed PIAC’s request for customer information and the Competitive Network Operators of Canada’s (CNOC) request specifically for wholesale customer information to be disclosed, noting it “is bound by its customer contracts and CRTC rules to maintain the confidentiality of customer information.”
The company said this does not change because some customers indicated publicly that they were impacted by the outage.
“Furthermore, wholesale and other business customers are well aware of whether or not they are customers of Rogers and how they were impacted by the outage and can make this known if they wish to do so (and as some have already done),” Rogers said. “It is their prerogative to disclose this relationship, not Rogers.”
Rogers’ response was inadequate, Geoff White, executive director and general counsel at CNOC, indicated in a statement emailed to Cartt.ca.
“As we wrote in our August 5th request for disclosure, and it bears repeating and emphasizing: The outage had a devastating impact on Rogers’ wholesale customers, resulting in significant direct monetary costs as well as reputational harm,” White said.
“Wholesale customers should be able to understand what Rogers has told the Commission about the impact of the outage upon their services and end-users so that they may comment upon whether Rogers has accurately described the impact.”
White goes on to note there were other stakeholders demanding Rogers disclose more information as well and said that while Rogers admits the outage “was simply not acceptable”, the company went “on to brush off many of the disclosure requests, including, crucially, how Rogers’ outage impacted other TSPs.”
“Rogers’ justification is that they are bound by customer confidentiality provisions and regulatory rules barring disclosure,” White said. “Therein lies the fundamental difficulty facing stakeholders when trying to hold major incumbents to account, because so much of what goes on is beyond scrutiny of the public, and indeed the CRTC, unless the CRTC makes a formal order with the force of law behind it which will override the confidentiality provisions. In this case, we trust that the CRTC will rule in favour of full transparency, which is necessary for full accountability.”
Among the other request for disclosure White referred to in his statement is one submitted by Canada Deaf Grassroots Movement (CDGM) and the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Coalition (DHH Coalition, which is includes Deafness Advocacy Association Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador Association of the Deaf, and Ontario Association of the Deaf). The groups indicated in their request that Rogers’ deaf, hard of hearing and deaf-blind customers were impacted more by the outage than their hearing counterparts and asked for more information to be disclosed that is specific to the impact on them.
Rogers’ Aug. 12 response to the requests for disclosure noted the request but said the report it submitted to the CRTC on its outage does not contain such information.
The telecom said it “takes accessibility issues very seriously,” and indicated it believes the steps it is taking including separating its wireless and wireline network core will ensure its hearing-impaired customers will have access to 9-1-1 and data services during future outages through its wireless network or WiFi.
“We are also working with our peers to assess potential solutions for ensuring continued operability of 9-1-1 calling in similar circumstances to ensure that all Canadians always have access to these services,” Rogers’ response reads.
Kimberly Wood, founder of CDGM and Elliott Richman, of the DHHC and DAANS acting consultant on regulatory affairs, said in an email to Cartt.ca they are not satisfied with Rogers’ response, which did not contain information specific to Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) consumers.
“There were no references to Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) consumers in this response,” they said, while pointing out DHH customers faced unique challenges during the outage including being unable to text 9-1-1 because they cannot borrow someone else’s phone to do so because phones with that capability need to be pre-registered and they cannot remove their SIM cards to do so because their phones would become unregistered and texting would be blocked.
“We would like to see future RFIs from CRTC specifically address how DHH consumers are treated during and after such outages and for Rogers to publicly disclose how and where improvements may be made in future outages,” they said.
Cartt.ca also reached out to PIAC for a comment but were told yesterday they are reviewing the file.
