Rogers outage: Major telecoms reach deal for services to be available during emergencies – National | Globalnews.ca

The federal Industry Minister says Canada’s major telecom companies have reached a formal agreement to “ensure and guarantee” emergency roaming and other mutual assistance in the case of a major outage.

The deal comes after a massive Rogers Communications Inc. service disruption in July that affected millions of Canadians.

Rogers, Telus and Bell were ordered to collaborate in the event of an emergency in the immediate aftermath of the outage. They had to enter into a formal agreement within 60 days of July 11 to take initial steps to improve resiliency.

The agreement would require the companies to explore how to implement emergency roaming if their networks go down again to allow emergency services to keep operating by using other providers, as well as a communication protocol to better inform the public and authorities, and to provide mutual assistance during outages.

More to come.