As a telecommunications provider, we understand that the Rogers outage was every telco’s worst nightmare. We realize how a calamity like this may have a significant impact on businesses. There has been significant talk about how important it is for Canadians to have an ecosystem with redundancy and resilience, as well as the tremendous risk of having a market controlled by only a few significant incumbents.
In reality, no one ISP is immune to disruptions. The majority of downtimes involve small, isolated areas of their network – micro-outages caused by broken fiber-optic connections. Businesses and network providers strive to establish resilient systems by including redundant links and routes in their network infrastructures.
When done correctly, the second Internet connection is completely independent of the first, forming an alternate route with no points in common with the primary route. The Rogers outage provided alarming illustrations of what may happen when a carrier becomes a firm network’s single point of failure, and it has brought the topic of carrier diversification to the forefront.
Increasing diversity
Many firms have a significant issue when it comes to generating network diversity. Not all buildings are made equal when it comes to connection. Some have digital infrastructures that are better suited to ensure continuous connectivity. A building with numerous high-speed fiber providers provides additional alternatives for this critical variety, as well as access to competitive pricing.
Multi-tenant buildings can be difficult for carriers to construct telecom facilities and within. The ownership of cables and structures on public highways is generally acknowledged, but the “final inch” of vertical and horizontal passage inside a building is less well defined. The CRTC forbids building owners from refusing any registered facilities-based carrier access to the facility to install or modify wire and equipment under its Broadcasting Distribution Regulations and Telecom Decision CRTC 2003-45. All tenants within have access to the vertical and horizontal paths.
Despite this structure, some property owners and managers obstruct this access, particularly for smaller carriers. Despite the CRTC judgment, it is very uncommon for a carrier to be denied access altogether. And the carrier has virtually little recourse.
Canadian enterprises have the right to choose their provider. The CRTC 2003-45 decision and the accompanying judgments provide some foundation for protecting that right, but it falls short of guaranteeing Canadian companies have fair and equitable access to their carrier of choice. That is why Beanfield established TelCARRMA. The Telecommunication Carrier Alliance for Responsible Riser Management and Access is an ad hoc alliance of facilities-based telecom carriers working to guarantee that our interactions with property and riser managers are compatible with fair and appropriate access to buildings and their paths. The Rogers outage emphasizes the need of network diversity and real end-user choice in the long run. The penalty of that single point of failure on July 8 is too great for all of us to bear.
