Rogers appoints new CTO weeks after national outage

Rogers Communication Inc. has appointed Ron McKenzie, the company’s former president of Rogers for Business, as its new chief technology officer (CTO) two weeks after the telecom giant experienced a national outage affecting both its home internet and wireless customers, as well as the wholesale-based internet service providers that purchase its services. Jorge Fernandes is stepping down as Rogers’ CTO effective immediately, a company spokesperson confirmed Thursday. Mckenzie served as president of Rogers for Business since June 2021 “where he was a key partner with technology, responsible for delivering wireless, wireline, , advanced services and data centre products and solutions to small, medium, large and public sector businesses across Canada,” according to the company’s website. McKenzie also led technical operations at Rogers for more than two years. From 2009 to 2019 McKenzie worked for Shaw Communications Inc. as vice-president of Shaw Business, vice-president of Operations, senior vice-president of Business, and finally as chief operating officer. National Bank analyst Adam Shine wrote in a Thursday analyst note that McKenzie's experience at both companies "should offer a good fit during the future anticipated integration of Shaw whose purchase still requires regulatory approvals from the Competition Bureau and ISED." Shine said a change in CTO was inevitable and the fact that McKenzie wasn't appointed in the interim demonstrates "confidence in his capabilities." "He's regarded as a process-oriented executive who appears qualified for his new responsibilities." This is just one of the many changes expected to take place as a consequence to the outage which disrupted Interac services and government services for the better part of a day. In response to the outage, Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne directed Canada’s largest telecommunications companies to negotiate “mutual assistance” agreements during outages, institute emergency roaming on each other’s networks, and establish a communication protocol “to better inform the public and authorities during telecommunications emergencies.” The CRTC is investigating the outage, demanding that Rogers provide a “complete and detailed” report of the outage, including timelines, root causes, numbers of customers and services affected. The CRTC also wants to know what measures or steps were put in place after the last major outage in April of 2021, why they failed to prevent the most recent outage, and how Rogers’ staff communicated with each other in the early hours of the outage. Last week, the House of Commons Industry committee voted to conduct a hearing into the outage. It will study of a number of different aspects including the causes; the impact on families, consumers, businesses, as well as the healthcare, law enforcement, and financial sectors; best practices to prevent and mitigate similar outages in the future; and best practices for communication during an outage in the future.

Rogers appoints new CTO weeks after national outage

People | July 21, 2022

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Rogers appoints new CTO weeks after national outage

People | July 21, 2022

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