Rogers networks reliability and resiliency assessment after 2022-07-08 outage
A Canadian regulatory report on Rogers’ nationwide outage in July 2022 reveals basic engineering failures, such as routing all traffic through a shared core and lacking any out‑of‑band management network, that left staff unable to restore service for over 24 hours. Commenters link these technical shortcomings to structural issues: a protected telecom oligopoly, weak competitive pressure, and management decisions that prioritized cost over resilience. Some point to smaller ISPs and cross‑border or VoIP workarounds as partial escapes from high prices and poor reliability, while noting that meaningful improvement likely requires regulatory reform and greater transparency from carriers.
Rogers Outage: Technical Failures
- Staff depended on Rogers’ own mobile and internet for coordination; when both failed, incident response was severely hampered, leading to improvised use of competitor SIMs.
- Commenters highlight the absence of out‑of‑band (OOB) management as the most egregious issue; without OOB, recovery took ~24 hours.
- Core wireless and wireline networks shared a single IP core; a route leak took down virtually all services nationwide.
- Many view the “lessons learned” (separate management plane, backup connectivity, segregated cores) as basic “networking 101” that should never have been missing.
- Some readers see the official claim that this was “not a design flaw” as inconsistent with the changes now being made.
Root Causes: Culture, Management, and Incentives
- Several argue the true root cause is management’s cost‑vs‑reliability tradeoff, not a single technical mistake.
- Others stress organizational and cultural failure: poor engineering discipline, risky deployment practices, and a “ship it, customers will find bugs” attitude.
- Some see this as emblematic of broader issues in Canadian engineering/business culture and brain drain; others counter that Canada has a strong engineering tradition but weak business/scale‑up culture.
Market Structure, Monopolies, and Regulation
- Strong criticism of Canada’s telecom oligopoly (Rogers, Bell, Telus): high prices, poor service, and little incentive to invest in resiliency.
- The Rogers–Shaw deal is widely seen as entrenching market power; a minority argue Shaw lacked capital and the merger was preferable to collapse.
- Debate over foreign ownership restrictions:
- One side calls the ban on foreign entrants a “shame” that blocks real competition.
- Another defends domestic control as a sovereignty issue, arguing competition can be created via spectrum policy and merger limits.
- Workarounds like US plans with Canadian roaming, global eSIMs, and VoIP DIDs are discussed; some see them as niche escapes, others as impractical for mass users.
Broader Implications and Side Effects
- The outage is cited as evidence against a fully cashless economy, given disruption of ATMs and payments.
- Some praise the regulator’s detailed post‑incident report and wish such transparency were mandatory from carriers.
- Thread branches into critiques of Canadian healthcare, housing, and pay levels, with multiple participants considering emigration, while others note every country has serious flaws.