Rogers says he is “making progress” in fixing a massive disruption to phone, internet and debit payments across Canada and has apologized for defrauding customers.
The communications company has not yet said what caused its service to go down on Friday, or when it will be back up and running.
“Our technical teams are working to restore our services together with our global technology partners and are making progress,” the company said in a statement shortly after 3 p.m. Friday.
“We know how much you trust our networks. We let you down today. We are working to correct this as quickly as possible.”
Users have been unable to access the Internet, make phone calls or access cable television from regions across the country, although most outage reports are in southern Ontario.
There have been widespread implications for the outage in Ontario, including for people trying to call 911.
Several police departments said Friday morning that people may have trouble accessing emergency services by phone.
metrolinex also warned customers that GO Transit tickets cannot be purchased using debit or credit payments.
The Toronto Hospital for Sick Children said outage is causing disruption with your virtual dating systemindicating that affected patients will be contacted to re-book appointments.
Scarborough Health Network in Toronto is asking all doctors and staff currently on call to come in for their shift until the outage is resolved.
Many users have turned to social networks to obtain information about the situation.
In a tweet on Friday morning, Bell said his clients you may be experiencing issues when trying to call or text Rogers customers.
“Bell’s network is operational and calls and text messages between Bell customers or with other carriers are not affected,” the company said. Bell is the parent company of CTV.
Telus issued a similar statement, tweeting: “The network outage affecting Rogers customers is not affecting TELUS Internet, home phone, or wireless infrastructure.”
Many retailers and businesses are also facing problems accepting payments because Interac, which processes electronic financial transactions, said its online debit and payment offerings and electronic transfer services are affected.
“There is currently a nationwide communications outage with a network provider that is impacting the availability of INTERAC services,” Interac said on Friday.
In April 2021, Rogers experienced a nationwide blackout which saw many unable to make calls, send text messages or access their internet browsers. The communications company attributed this outage to a software problem.
fall detectorA website that tracks outages showed that people began reporting problems with Rogers service around 4:30 a.m. EDT, and 20,000 reports had been logged by 7 a.m.
Customers in Toronto, Kitchener, Moncton, Ottawa, and Mississauga posted the most reports on the website: 45% said they were experiencing a total blackout, 29% had problems with mobile internet, and 26% had problems with the fixed Internet.
Downdetector also showed spikes in outage reports for independent service providers like TekSavvy, which often take advantage of Rogers’ network.
TekSavvy said in a tweet that it was being affected by the outage and was having issues with contact center phone lines, but had no estimate of when a fix might be forthcoming.
“The outage is shining a light on the general lack of telecommunications competition in Canada,” said Vass Bednar, executive director of McMaster University’s master’s program in public policy.
The country’s telecommunications sector is dominated by three major carriers — Rogers, BCE Inc. and Telus Corp. — and their control over the industry has long been a concern of academics, who have called on regulators to increase competition for mobile and Internet services. in Canada.
With archives from The Canadian Press