The investment announcement was made by the company’s president and CEO in response to a network outage in early July 2022
Rogers Communications was hit by a network outage on 8 July 2022. (Credit: Rowanlovescars/Wikimedia Commons)
Rogers Communications, a Canadian telecommunications company, has revealed plans to invest C$10bn ($7.74bn) in artificial intelligence (AI), and more testing and oversight over the next three years.
The investment announcement was made by the company’s president and CEO Tony Staffieri in response to a network outage earlier this month that resulted in widespread disruptions in Canada, impacting various industries.
Rogers Communications also plans to partner with a major technology company to carry out a full review of its network to help it learn from the outage.
On 9 July 2022, a day after the network outage, the company said that the cause of it was narrowed to the failure of a network system. This was after a maintenance update in the company’s core network, which resulted in some of its routers to malfunction.
Staffieri said that the company will physically separate its wireless and internet services. This will result in an ‘always on’ network to ensure that customers don’t face an outage with cellular as well as internet services again, said the company’s CEO.
The company is also claimed to have made notable progress on a formal agreement between carriers for automatically switching 911 calls to each other’s networks even in the case of disruption on any carrier’s network.
Staffieri stated: “I believe this is the only responsible way forward and I am personally committed to making it possible for all Canadians.”
Earlier this year, Rogers Communications in collaboration with Ericsson launched the first commercial 5G standalone network in Canada. The launch of the network follows the wrapping up of the rollout of the first national standalone 5G core in the country along with the receipt of the first 5G standalone device certification by the company.