Effective immediately McKenzie replaces former CTIO Jorge Fernandes in the new role.
According to a spokesperson for the company, “Rogers can confirm Jorge Fernandes will be stepping down from his role as chief technology and information officer.”
The news comes following one of the company's biggest network outages to date, earlier this month that brought banking, transport and government to a standstill for 19-hours. The outage affected both wireless and wireline services and was reportedly caused by network system failure following a maintenance update.
Speaking to the Financial Post, Maher Yaghi, a telecoms analyst at Bank of Nova Scotia, commented: “We suspect some accountability to the major network failure that took place two weeks ago was unavoidable.
“We also view this as a demonstration that Rogers is taking the situation seriously and looking to improve internal operations as the company prepares for a likely gruelling meeting … July 25, in front of the (federal government’s) standing committee on industry and technology.”
Having joined Rogers in 2019, prior to his appointment, McKenzie served as president of Rogers for Business from 2021-2022. Before this he also held the role of senior vice president of technical operations.
McKenzie started his career with Shaw Communications, a company he joined back in 2010, assuming the positions of vice president of Shaw Business; vice president of operations; senior vice president of business; and senior vice president and chief operating officer.
