The Competition Tribunal has ruled the July 8th Rogers outage will be relevant to proceedings on Rogers’ overtaking of Shaw.
The tribunal made the ruling Friday after they heard from the Commissioner of Competition and representatives from Rogers.
The outage impacted 13 million wireline and wireless customers. However, it’s important to know the final figure of impacted users is much higher than 13 million, as the outage impacted carriers and various companies who use Rogers services.
Rogers is vying to buy out Shaw in a $26-billion merger but has only received approval from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) so far. Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) has yet to make a decision, and the Competition Bureau has opposed the merger, stating it’s not in the best interest of Canadians.
To address concerns, Rogers said it will sell Freedom Mobile, Shaw’s wireless asset, to Vidéotron to create more competition. While the sale is contingent on the approval of Rogers’ takeover of Shaw, the Commissioner says the sale is “not an effective remedy.”
“It fails to eliminate the substantial lessening and prevention of competition the proposed transaction will cause,” the Commissioner states in an amended response posted on August 15th.
Source: Competition Tribunal
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