Eastlink competitors seeking compensation for “negligence” during outage, ask for investigation similar to Rogers outage

City Wide Communications Inc., Frontier Networks Inc., and Purple Cow Internet Inc., have filed a Part 1 application against Bragg Communications Inc. operating as Eastlink, seeking compensation for a widespread network outage that occurred in July and are urging the CRTC to initiate a comprehensive examination, similar to the one conducted in response to the Rogers Communications Inc.’s national outage in 2022. The Eastlink outage — caused by its billing system error, disconnecting all third party internet access (TPIA) customers for approximately 24 hours — left tens of thousands of Canadians without telecom services, including internet access, IPTV, VoIP services, and even the ability to call 911 over VoIP. “The commission should make a ruling determining whether Eastlink was negligent in causing and responding to the outage and, if negligence is established, order Eastlink to provide the maximum amount of compensation available under Eastlink’s TPIA tariff to each of the competitors,” the parties wrote in their Part 1 dated Nov. 9. According to the three competitors, the TPIA support department at Eastlink initially disregarded the reports, stating that the disconnections were due to unpaid bills and would only be restored upon payment. In other cases, the department offered no substantial response. Despite multiple attempts to reach out to various support numbers and Eastlink staff, the competitors struggled to establish meaningful contact with anyone at Eastlink for several hours. “It was not until late- afternoon Atlantic Time on 3 July 2023, after City Wide called the president of Eastlink on his mobile number, that Eastlink began to acknowledge a serious error had occurred on its end and that it was working on fixing the issue,” the Part 1 states. In a statement to The Wire Report, Eastlink said it will set the record straight through its response “to the inaccurate claims in this filing.” The competitors claim that they have suffered repetitional harm due to the prolonged nature of the outage, the fact they were unable to effectively communicate with their end-users, and Eastlink failing to provide a public statement acknowledging its responsibility for the outage. This failure violated subsection 27(2) of the Telecommunications Act, granting Eastlink an undue advantage and disadvantaging its TPIA Customers, the competitors argued. The competitors argue that certain provisions of Eastlink's TPIA Agreement are anti-competitive because they restrict TPIA customers from using Eastlink's trademarks or mentioning the company in connection with their services without express written consent. The parties assert that these restrictions hindered their ability to communicate effectively with their customers. They claim this clause in the agreement, allowed by the CRTC, is unjustified and call for a correction in the regulatory approach. The competitors further added that they are suffering from an economic fallout, including additional labor costs to address the emergency, increased end-customer disconnections, costs associated with mitigating reputational harm, and deferred business and marketing plans. The competitors also incurred legal costs in preparing and submitting the application to the commission. Eastlink did offer the competitors a credit equivalent to one day's worth of TPIA charges , which they deemed inadequate. “The damages caused by the outage have been immense, are ongoing, and vastly exceed the minimum compensation required by Eastlink’s TPIA Tariff that was provided by Eastlink,” they wrote in the Part 1. The competitors argue that Eastlink's negligence warrants compensation in accordance with Eastlink's TPIA tariff, potentially up to three months of TPIA charges. The competitors are requesting a thorough investigation through the issuance of requests for information to Eastlink, giving them an opportunity to make further submissions based on Eastlink's responses, and “if negligence is established, an order requiring Eastlink to provide the maximum amount of compensation available under Eastlink’s TPIA Tariff to each of the competitors.” Finally, they are requesting that Eastlink pay significant administrative monetary penalties amounting to millions of dollars “to deter the kinds of illegal conduct that Eastlink engaged in with respect to the outage” including: non-compliance with the rules on network outage notification and reporting; organizing its billing systems in a way that breaches the disconnection terms outlined in its TPIA tariff; and refusing to aid the competitors in lessening the impact of the outage by refusing to issue public statements acknowledging sole responsibility, contravening the stipulations of subsection 27(2) of the Telecommunications Act. The CRTC and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne have implemented some measures to address outages. Champagne got Canada’s largest providers to sign a memorandum of understanding that established a communications protocol, mutual assistance agreements, and emergency roaming capabilities between providers in response to the Rogers outages. He also directed the Canadian Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (CSTAC) to produce a report outlining recommendations to improve network reliability. The CRTC issued its own consultation on network resiliency in response to increased service outages. –Reporting by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca and editing by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca

Eastlink competitors seeking compensation for “negligence” during outage, ask for investigation similar to Rogers outage

News | November 16, 2023

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Eastlink competitors seeking compensation for “negligence” during outage, ask for investigation similar to Rogers outage

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