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If you live in Canada, there are some good odds that you probably can’t even read this article. Because the largest telecom in the country, Rogers, is currently suffering wide-scale outages. This has taken internet access, mobile service, and even landlines down across the great white North. The worst part may be that it’s also affecting emergency services calls.
The problems started early July 8th, though it took until 9 am ET for Rogers to acknowledge the issue on their site. It still currently features the following banner near the top of the page:
Service interruption
We acknowledge the impact our outage is having on your life. We have every technical resource and partner fully deployed to solve the problem. As soon as we know the specific time the Networks will be fully operational, we will share that with you. Right now, we are focused on the solution. Some of our customers have raised the question of credits and of course we will be proactively crediting all customers and will share more information soon.
The country’s other telecoms (Bell and Telus) have stated that their services haven’t been affected by the Rogers outage. That said, downdetector.ca seems to imply otherwise, though nowhere near as widespread.
In addition, Canada’s national cybersecurity agency Communications Security Establishment has offered help to Rogers.
The other major problem is that, well, a lot of services in Canada are built on Rogers services. For example, travelers actually can’t complete the process to get back in the country, instead needing to rely on paper documentation which they may not have brought with them. Things get granular from there on; for example, wading pools had to be shut down. Oh, and shopping is now more difficult for obvious card-reader reasons.
And to really put the cherry on top, here, the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission, which regulates the telecom companies, is also down due to the outage.
The good news is that it’ll probably be fixed at some point in the future. And at least it happened on a Friday. And it also wasn’t every other federally-regulated service; though considering just how much is reliant on Rogers services, that point is probably moot.
Source: PC Gamer
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