Rogers Communications has revealed its capital expenditure increased 18 percent to of C$872 million, including 52 percent growth in network investment during Q3 2022.
Rogers Communications said its Capex touched $543 million in Wireless, $259 million in Cable and $28 million in Media.
The increases in Capex in Wireless business this quarter and year to date were a result of investments made to upgrade wireless network. Rogers deployed 3500 MHz spectrum in several cities across Canada, including Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Halifax, among others. The deployment of 3500 MHz spectrum substantially augmented the capacity and resilience of earlier 5G deployments in the 600 MHz spectrum band.
The increases in Capex in Cable business this quarter and year to date have reflected investments in network infrastructure, including additional fibre deployments to increase FTTH distribution. These upgrades will lower the number of homes passed per node and incorporate the latest technologies to help deliver more bandwidth and a more engaging customer experience.
Service footprint expansion and upgrades to DOCSIS 3.1 platform to evolve to DOCSIS 4.0 will offer increased network resilience and stability along with faster download speeds over time.
Tony Staffieri, President and CEO of Rogers, said: “We will continue to invest in our networks and our customers’ experience to deliver the resilience and service our customers expect.”
Rogers has refunded approximately $150 million as compensation during July as network outage-related credits.
Customers of Rogers on July 8, 2022 faced a network outage across both wireless and wireline services following a maintenance update in core network that caused some of its routers to malfunction. Rogers disconnected the specific equipment and redirected traffic, which allowed network and services to come back online over time.
Rogers reported total revenue of $3.743 billion (+2 percent) and service revenue of $3.23 billion (+3 percent) during July-September, 2022.
