Canada’s internet outage should encourage us to dismantle our telecom oligopoly

A recent telecommunications outage left millions of Canadians without access to internet and cell services for hours. It was a stunning reminder that Canada must revolutionize the industry and dismantle the oligopoly that runs it. On July 8, more than 10 million customers of Rogers Communications were left without internet and cell services when a maintenance update went sideways. At least two days later, some customers were still without service, while others had unreliable access. It was the second time in 15 months the Rogers service failed. The system breakdown was more than a mere disruption to streaming services or texting friends. The country’s social, political and economic infrastructure was compromised. Canada’s telecommunications industry is critical to the country, an essential component to the systems through which we live our lives. The Rogers outage demonstrated once more that leaving the operation and security of telecommunications to a handful of corporations — which are more than happy to use the constrained market to bilk customers — is unwise and dangerous. As disconcerting as the Rogers failure was, some good might come of it yet. Maybe people have finally had enough of being used and abused by a handful of unaccountable companies in an industry everyone relies upon. Maybe we’ll see a shift in how we think about telecom services — and what we do to make them work for us.

[David Moscrop is a contributing columnist for The Washington Post.]