Rogers earlier this week experienced a wireless outage that knocked out voice and SMS services for several hours. It has now identified the issue that triggered the outage and already taken corrective action to ensure that it does not reoccur. It provided the following statement on the root cause:
“This was not the result of an outside attack. We are investigating to find the root cause.
We experienced an unprecedented surge in our signaling traffic and this temporarily overloaded our mobile switches which didn’t properly manage the spike creating a service disruption. We worked diligently with our outside suppliers who developed a software fix, to change how the switches manage a signaling surge, and to prevent the issue from happening again.”
Signalling is the way the carrier manages the handling of calls. For example, it allows for the transfer of calls between access points as a customer is moving about to ensure that the call does not drop. The mobile switches could not deal with the spike and restarted. These restarts caused the service disruptions. The software fix Rogers deployed has changed how switches handle signalling surges.
Rogers has already apologized to customers and will credit postpaid customers one day of service.
Source : The Globe and Mail