Rogers Has Revealed The Cause Of Friday's Outage & The Company's CEO Has Apologized

Rogers is finally sharing the cause of the massive network outage that rocked Canada on Friday: a maintenance update in the company's core network that caused some routers to malfunction. The company CEO wrote to customers on Sunday morning, apologizing for the system failure.

"We let you down on Friday. You have my personal commitment that we will do better," Rogers President and CEO Tony Staffieri wrote in an email to customers.

"We know how much you rely on our networks and I sincerely apologize. We’re particularly troubled that some customers could not reach emergency services, and we are addressing the issue as an urgent priority."

Internet and phone service went down for Rogers customers and those of other cell providers that use the company's network, like Fido, chatr and Cityfone.

Some emergency and banking services that rely on Rogers systems were also unavailable.

Meanwhile, Montreal's municipal services were seriously affected, with passport office call centres shut down for the day, along with taxi offices and the city's 311 information line.

While Rogers acknowledged the outage on Friday morning, it offered little information about the cause or when services might be restored.

Staffieri wrote that, as of Sunday, services have been restored and that company networks and systems are "close to fully operational."

He said technical teams are monitoring for any lingering issues while experts dig into the root cause of the outage to improve stability.

The company plans to credit customers who were affected by the outage. That credit will be applied automatically with no action required.