Banking, government, emergency services and more affected
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Telecommunications giant Rogers is experiencing a massive outage on Friday morning that is impacting wireless, cable and internet customers across the country.
The outage began some time in the early hours of Friday morning, with a wide variety of services impacted.
"We are currently experiencing an outage across our wireline and wireless networks and our technical teams are working hard to restore services as quickly as possible," a spokesperson for the company told CBC News Friday.
"On behalf of all of us at Rogers, we sincerely apologize to our customers, and we will continue to keep you updated as we have more information to share, including when we expect service to be back up. Thank you for your patience as we work to resolve this issue."
Internet monitoring watchdog group Netblocks.org reports that total internet traffic in Canada was at 75 per cent of its normal level on Friday morning.
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Rogers-owned flanker brands like Fido and Chatr are also offline, but even services not directly controlled by Rogers, such as emergency services, travel and financial networks, are having problems.
Debit payment services are interrupted. "A nationwide telecommunications outage with a network provider … is impacting the availability of some Interac services," a spokesperson for Interac confirmed to CBC News.
"Debit is currently unavailable online and at checkout. Interac e-Transfer is also widely unavailable, impacting the ability to send and receive payments."
Bell confirmed that it is having no issues on its network, although it says its customers are having difficulties connecting to anything on a Rogers network.
"The Bell network is operational and calls and texts between Bell customers or to other providers are not impacted," the company said on Twitter.
911 problems
The Toronto Police Service tweeted that Rogers customers in that city were having trouble connecting to 911, but stressed that the 911 service itself was working properly, as long as you aren't calling from a Rogers-affiliated device.
"We are working to resolve these issues," the force said.
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Other emergency services reported a similar status. "Although Rogers is experiencing a nationwide outage, our tests have shown 911 is still working," a spokesperson for the Fredericton Police Service told CBC News. Officials in Winnipeg and Vancouver also stressed that emergency services are operational, but people on the Rogers network can't seem to access them.
Under CRTC rules in place since 2017, telecom networks are supposed to ensure that cellphones are able to contact 911 even if they do not have service.
Canada's telecom regulator did not immediately reply to a request from CBC News as to whether the 911 problems seen Friday are in breach of those rules. In a tweet that, the CRTC said it also doesn't have reliable phone service due to the Rogers outage.
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They aren't the only ones. Ordinary Canadians told the CBC on Friday that the outage is unacceptable.
"This can't happen again without changes being made," Torontonian Andrew Revai told CBC News. "People can tweet all the memes they want about losing connectivity but how will Rogers keep this from happening again?"
Ottawa resident Robert Hubscher said "it's incomprehensible" that a company as big as Rogers could have an outage this widespread for this long.
He uses Rogers for his cellphone and home internet, and said in an interview Friday that he is glad he has some services with other companies to maintain connections right now.
"It's a little scary that the regulatory bodies are not looking at this more seriously," Hubscher said.
Other problems
Government services including already bottlenecked passport offices, Service Canada, Public Services and Procurement Canada and the Canada Revenue Agency are also affected.
The Canadian Border Services Agency says the ArriveCan app is disabled as a result of the outage, and as a result anyone arriving in Canada will have to have a paper copy of their vaccination status.
Internet provider TekSavvy, which buys access to the Rogers network on the wholesale level and then resells it to customers, tweeted from its online help account that its own services were down and there is "no ETA" about when it might be restored.
The Confederation Bridge between P.E.I. and New Brunswick reported that it has lost the ability to process debit payments, and is currently only accepting cash, credit or gift cards in exchange for payment.
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Ottawa's transit agency, OC Transpo, told its customers it is experiencing "technical issues with the internet and are unable to provide some telephone services."
CBC's radio station in Kitchener, Ont., has been taken offline and off the air as a result of the outage.
It's the second time in as many years that Rogers has been rocked by a major outage, as the company's wireless and cable networks went down in a similar fashion in April 2021. At the time, Rogers blamed an issue with a software update at one of its telecom equipment suppliers.
Analysis
What happened at Rogers? Day-long outage is over, but questions remain
Technology analyst Ritesh Kotak says he suspects the cause of the outage is "an update gone wrong" in one of Rogers' internal systems.
Regardless of why, he says it underscores how vulnerable Canada's economy is to outages like this, and says he makes sure all his telecom services come from different providers for this exact reason.
"It shows just how reliant we are on this technology," he said in an interview. "From some government services … to working from home, all that has literally been shut down."
A look at how the Rogers outage is impacting London
Torontonians scramble amid Rogers outage, services like 911, Bike Share and Green P parking all affected
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***You should see the temper tantrums and how many people don't have cash or credit cards, looks like instant tellers are down at bank too. Yelling a screaming because they didn't read the big signs saying CASH OR CREDIT CARD ONLY!! And they fill their shopping cart anyhow, not having either!!!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
****uPDATE: 6:33PM and still down, ATMs and no Debit Cards in stores, their cell phones are down and illegal for them not to have an Emergency backup 911 system and they don't. Some _____ is going to fly!!!! With no 911 backup according to regulations for running a phone company.
Now there's a crisis!
