UPDATE 1-Rogers' wireline services restored after brief, limited outage
(Updates with details, background)
Oct 20 (Reuters) - Canada's Rogers Communications Inc said on Thursday its wireline services have been restored after a brief disruption impacted a few customers in some areas, which the telecoms giant blamed on a fiber cut caused by a third party.
"Our team completed repairs overnight and wireline services are back online for all impacted customers in Bradford and surrounding areas," tweeted Rogers.
The company said under 5000 customers were affected by the outage.
Rogers, which is in its last leg of a C$20 billion ($15.6 billion) deal to buy rival Shaw Communications, faced a massive outage on July 8 that paralyzed the country's banking and emergency services for nearly 19 hours. The company had blamed the unprecedented network outage on a router malfunction after maintenance work.
In response, Canadian government ordered a probe in July and demanded telecoms companies agree within 60 days to develop communication protocols to keep people better informed.
Last month, major telecommunication companies in Canada formally agreed to provide support to each other and keep phone services running in case of network outages.
Shares of Rogers were flat on Thursday, while the benchmark Canadian share index was up 0.8% in morning trade. (Reporting by Tiyashi Datta in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
