Rogers Communications’ network outage on Friday left consumers and businesses without service for nearly a full day — and now they’re looking for compensation.
The outages affected wireless service, internet connectivity and phone lines, as well as important infrastructure such as the Interac payment network.
Rogers eventually told frustrated consumers that a maintenance issue was behind the downed service, and promised that users would be “proactively credited” for the disruption.
Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri told Global News in an interview Monday that the company would “do the right thing” when it comes to reimbursing affected users and businesses alike.
So what are Rogers customers owed, and when will the compensation land in your account? Here’s what we know so far.
5:46 The fallout from the Rogers outage and tips to stay proactive
The fallout from the Rogers outage and tips to stay proactive
What is the status of Rogers’ network?
Staffieri said Monday that the telecom giant ran a “root cause analysis” into the system failure that confirmed initial assumptions about an error in the code of a network maintenance upgrade.
That error was pushed through the Rogers system, which overloaded the network with data and caused equipment to fail, he said.
The company is still seeing “very few intermittent issues” but Staffieri did not have an exact figure on how many customers are still without service on Monday afternoon.
He said the company’s focus is on getting connectivity back and ensuring the resiliency of the network in the days to come.
“What happened on Friday is unacceptable and we’re committed to taking every step within our control to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” he said.
How much is Rogers going to give customers? When?
The telecom CEO said Monday that Rogers will be figuring out what each customer is owed on a “pro-rated basis based on the duration of the outage.”
He confirmed that credits will be automatically applied to customer accounts.
1:26 Rogers outage leaves customers wondering how this happened
Rogers outage leaves customers wondering how this happened
The compensation should appear automatically on the next month’s bill, though he said some might be processed the following month.
This approach is similar to how Rogers handled refunds for its outage in April 2021.
Affected customers won’t have to apply for the refund in any way — text messages purporting to be from Rogers and asking users to enter information or click on links to claim their compensation should be treated as likely spam.
What about businesses?
As inconvenient as Friday’s outages were for consumers, the inability to process payments or, in some cases, answer the phone meant significant lost revenue for many businesses in Canada.
“This coming right after two years of pandemic-related restrictions and closures is devastating. Every single day of income at this period is absolutely critical,” Dan Kelly, CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), told Global News on Monday.
Many businesses were left scrambling to come up with different payment solutions after going cashless during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kelly noted.
The CFIB is hoping there’s a more significant recognition from Rogers about the widespread impact of its outages on the Canadian economy.
Kelly said he’d like to see a month’s worth of charges for Rogers utilities covered for affected businesses, not just a single day, to reflect the outsized impact for business owners.
“I’m going to lose it if Rogers thinks that one day of (fees) is the adequate compensation for a small business,” he said.
Global News asked Staffieri if businesses would be treated any differently than personal accounts.
He did not answer directly, but reiterated that the company is having individual conversations with customers on a case-by-case basis to address concerns about service and compensation.
“Our primary goal is to make sure they have the connectivity and to continue to work with them and keep them as customers. It’s in our interest to do that,” Staffieri said.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said in a statement Monday that Rogers “has a responsibility to pay back small businesses that lost revenue during the outage.”
1:10 NDP opposed to Rogers-Shaw merger, Singh says
NDP opposed to Rogers-Shaw merger, Singh says – Nov 22, 2021
Kelly said one lesson for those affected by the outage is that while bundling services with one telco might keep costs lower upfront, diversifying phone and internet deals could protect a business when service drops.
“From a business contingency perspective, the best advice we have for business owners is not to put all of your apples in one wagon here,” he said.
How do we know this won’t happen again?
The outage has prompted swift reaction from Rogers, government and other stakeholders to ensure network outages aren’t as long-lasting or widespread.
“You can expect changes going forward to make sure that we improve the resiliency and redundancy of our networks so that this doesn’t happen again,” Staffieri said.
Rogers will announce exact changes to its network infrastructure in due course, the CEO said, but he hinted that there will be operational changes and stopgaps built into the network to avoid cases where a single error can be spread quickly through the system.
Staffieri also said the company had identified the issue that prevented some customers from being able to call 911 during the outage, and said Rogers would be sharing that information with other industry stakeholders to keep critical services functioning when any one provider experiences an outage.
Staffieri was set to meet with Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne and other telecom heads on Monday afternoon to discuss ways to improve network reliability across Canada.
Interac, meanwhile, said on Monday that it was adding another network provider to its system after the Rogers outage left millions of Canadians locked out of online payments.
What can consumers do?
The widespread impact of the Rogers outage reveals an over-reliance on a few major telecom providers in Canada, industry stakeholders say, and there may be a role for consumers to play in promoting competition in the sector.
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) filed a letter with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) on Friday during the outage calling for an inquiry into the problems.
The NDP also called for an inquiry Monday and suggested it would call Champagne, Rogers and Interac to committee to hold them accountable for the lost service.
PIAC is also seeking to establish a set of baseline service requirements in the event of an outage to keep Canadians informed about the issues and create a standard for compensation in these incidents.
Yuka Sai, a staff lawyer with PIAC, told Global News the lack of such standards leaves consumers in the dark about what they’re owed when their network drops.
She said the outages reveal gaps in Canada’s telecom landscape, where drops in service can have an amplified impact.
“The national magnitude of the outage really calls into question whether it’s wise to rely on one large national provider in many cases to provide a wide swath of network services, internet services, and that, in the absence of real competition, is a real problem,” she said.
Rosa Addario is a communications manager with Open Media, which advocates for an open, affordable and surveillance-free internet in Canada.
Both she and Sai said the best thing for consumers to do now if they’re upset about the Rogers outages is to write letters to Champagne and their local members of Parliament calling for a more competitive telecom landscape in Canada.
“We should be angry right now and we should be upset and we should take this as an opportunity to light a fire under us and consider how we can strive for a better system,” she told Global News.
“This doesn’t have to be the status quo.”
— with files from Global News’ Anne Gaviola and Reuters
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
