The Canadian government on Monday ordered a probe for Rogers Communications' network outage and demanded telecom companies to agree, within 60 days, to develop communication protocols to keep people better informed.

Millions in Canada were without internet and cable services due to a major outage of Rogers' networks last Friday. Nearly every facet of life were disrupted, such as banking, transportation and even the emergency services. Rogers said most customers have had their services restored on Monday.

Canadian Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne on Monday said he had directed telecom companies to assist each other in emergencies and develop communication protocols.

The glitch also cast doubts over Rogers' 20-billion-Canadian-dollar ($15.4 billion) takeover of Shaw Communications, after the outage highlighted the perils of Canada's effective telecom monopoly and sparked a backlash against its industry dominance. Shares in both companies fell more than 4 percent on Monday as analysts voiced concerns over increased risk to the deal.

"I think people in Canada and certainly the CEOs of the telcos in Canada understand that I've said very clearly and openly that I will not allow the wholesale transfer of licenses from Shaw to Rogers and I think this is well understood," Champagne said on Monday.

The outage came two days after Rogers held talks with Canada's antitrust authority to discuss possible remedies to its blocked Shaw takeover.

The minister also told Rogers to compensate its customers for the outage that it blamed on a router malfunction after maintenance work.

Canada's telecommunications regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, will probe the outage, he added.

(With input from Reuters)