The Rogers network outage on Friday highlighted Canada’s reliance on the telecommunications industry, experts say, as more than 10 million people across the country were left without service, struggling to make purchases, unable to use their phones and access Wi-Fi for almost an entire day.

Tyler Chamberlain, assistant professor at the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa, told Global News: "When you are very close to something, it’s hard to really realize how much you depend on it."

"So taking it out of service is a big disruption."

Chamberlain was in Toronto during the outage and heard repeated announcements at a grocery store while shopping that paying with a personal bank card dépit card would not be an option at checkout.

Explaining  "Store employees had to reclaim large baskets of goods and restock them on shelves because people actually had to not be able to pay the cost from their bank cards."

"The fact that people were actually walking away from grocery stores, that’s sad. That worries me."

And since technology systems will always face inevitable failures, similar outages are likely to happen in the future.

Chamberlain said: "The idea that we will completely avoid this, I think that is probably unrealistic."

Adding "There’s just so much that can be done regarding the actual maintenance of the internet. We don’t have many options."

Beanfield, an independent Fiber network operator, described the outage as a "telecommunications provider’s nightmare," but also said it was an example of why it has long been concerned over the lack of competitors to Rogers, Telus, and BCE.

 The company said on Twitter, "The lack of competition and choice can lead to the building a small town’s residents live in becoming completely dark - cut off from all communications."

Explaining, if you can't even get help from a neighbor, where do you go? How do you call 911?"

The company added that the business impacts are similarly huge.

The report said that consequences of such an outage on the financial sector, with no working ATMs, and affected operating bank branches, could be catastrophic.

"Not to mention independent businesses across the country with no means to process payments."

According to Chamberlain, the challenge of having only a limited number of service providers is not the only challenge Canada is facing.

Explaining, "The federal government has relaxed rules for foreign players in the telecommunications industry, but you don’t see them stepping in."

Adding "Part of that is because it would be very difficult to start from scratch and you have to pull all those people away from existing providers."

"You have to provide them with what makes them give up on Rogers and Bell."

Looking ahead to the future of the telecommunications industry in Canada, Chamberlain does not expect to see much change.

He said: "I think the time for major industry restructuring was many years ago."

"You are now in a position where it will be very difficult to change that."

To prepare in case of another nationwide outage, Chamberlain has advice for Canadians to follow.

Diversifying service providers is one option, though it has drawbacks.

Chamberlain said, "People tend not to do that because there is an advantage to bundling their services together."

"But, if you think about these things and are worried about them, that’s something you likely do to ensure you have different networks you can access."

Chamberlain also suggested keeping some cash, if possible, in case disruption again causes payment systems to fail.

"We take it for granted and have had it for a long time but one good thing about Canadian currency is that it can be used digitally, but it also has a physical form."

This is also another reason Canadians should be "skeptical" of cryptocurrency, according to Chamberlain.

"Technical systems, even large and expensive technical systems fail. You better hope your network never fails.

He said the fact that you cannot go back to physical money – it does not exist that way.

Tony Staffieri, President and CEO of Rogers Communications, said the outage was caused by a maintenance upgrade.

He said in an interview with Global News, "We did a maintenance upgrade on our core network that caused our routers to crash," noting the company has a team from around the world analyzing the outage.

Explaining "These routers inadvertently flooded the network with traffic and that caused the network not to operate for our customers."

Meanwhile, Canadian politicians, including François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, publicly commented on the telecommunications service outage saying "

"I spoke to the CEO of Rogers to share the frustrations of millions of Canadians."

Adding, "This unacceptable situation is why quality, diversity and reliability in our telecommunications network matters."

Champagne said he plans to meet with the CEO of Rogers, among others, to discuss the importance of improving networks across the country.