Rogers services down for thousands of customers across Canada

rogers-0708

Services of Rogers Communications Inc. were down for thousands of users on Friday morning, the wireless provider said, after customers in Ontario and across other areas of the country reported outages beginning early in the morning.

The disruption not only knocked out service for the telecom’s private customers, but also caused problems for police, Interac and government agencies.

In an email to the Financial Post, Rogers said the outage is being experienced across the company’s wireline and wireless networks.

“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,” the company said, adding that technical teams are “working hard to restore services as quickly as possible.”

In a statement posted online, Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said the ministry had been contact with Rogers and expressed “how important it is that this matter be resolved as soon as possible and for the company to provide prompt and clear communication directly to those impacted.”

According to online tracker Downdetector Canada, there were more than 20,000 reports as of 6:45 a.m. Users were reporting problems related to internet, TV and Wi-Fi connections.

Rogers outages reported on the online tracker site Downdetector Friday.

While the highest concentration came from Ontario, there were also reports of outages in Montreal, Winnipeg and Edmonton.

Early this morning Toronto police tweeted that some people were having trouble calling 911 because of Rogers’ technical difficulties.

Some local police services in Ontario are asking the public not to call 911 to test their cellphone service amid the network outage.

“While we are aware that Rogers network customers are experiencing a Canada-wide outage affecting cell and internet services, please do NOT test your phone by calling 9-1-1. This ties up our system for individuals who are in need of emergency assistance,” London Police Service in Ontario said on Twitter.

Story continues

The outage is also affecting government services that rely on the network. Service Canada said on Twitter that some of its call centres and offices, including passport offices, are affected.

The disruption is also impacting Interac and wholesale re-sellers of Rogers services.

In an email, Interac said it’s waiting for updates from Rogers on their resolution time.

The Canadian interbank network said the outage is impacting Interac Debit, which is currently unavailable online and at checkout, as well as Interac e-Transfer services, which are unavailable at most financial institutions, impacting the ability to send and receive payments.

Canadian Internet services provider Teksavvy Solutions Inc. said in a tweet that Rogers outage impacted many enterprises including itself.

Federal agency Communications Security Establishment said in an email that its national cybersecurity centre has been in contact with Rogers and offered assistance, in the event they should need it.

And the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission said in a tweet that it was monitoring the situation.

The telecom giant has about 10 million wireless subscribers and 2.25 million retail internet subscribers.

Additional reporting by Denise Paglinawan, Reuters

More to come …