Internet outage leaves millions of Canadians without access to internet, ATM machines and 911 lines

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A massive network outage from one of Canada’s largest telecommunications companies left millions of people without mobile and internet service, while an untold number of essential services – such as ATM transactions, 911 calls and transportation services – were also impacted by the crash.

Rogers Communications Inc, a Toronto-based company, offered no explanation for the blackout, nor provided a turnaround as to when full-service would be restored to their millions of customers.

The outage, which began early in the day on Friday, lasted for more than 15 hours as debit transactions, first responders, court proceedings, airlines and even hospital procedures were stymied, alongside general internet and mobile access for customers across the country.

“Our technical teams are working to restore our services alongside our global technology partners, and are making progress,” Rogers said in a statement Friday. “We know how much you rely on our networks. Today we have let you down. We are working to make this right as quickly as we can.”

By Saturday morning, the telecoms giant had issued another update, notifying customers that a “vast majority” of services had come back online, while still providing no answer as to what the cause behind the major disruption was.

“Following our previous updates, we have now restored services for the vast majority of our customers and our technical teams are working hard to ensure that the remaining customers are back online as quickly as possible,” the company said in a statement, adding that they would be “proactively crediting all customers”.

Online, once customers were able to get there, people began sharing their outrage at the nation-wide outage, emphasising the systematic problems that can arise when monopolies are allowed to take over an essential utility that enables services for a country’s basic functioning.

“When one company’s service outage takes down everything in a country from 911 calls to The Weeknd’s concert, that company has too much power,” tweeted Gerald Butts, a former principal secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

In addition to one of two sets from the Toronto rapper getting postponed, the disruption also forced businesses unable to process debit transactions to switch to analog or cash-only, while hospitals across southern Ontario reported that staff were unable to alert about being unwell, while others were forced to redirect their oncology patients to other facilities to receive emergency radiation.

“Because of the Rogers outage, millions of Canadians couldn’t call 911 yesterday. Hospitals couldn’t call in staff.  There was no way to call families so that they could say goodbye to their loved ones at end of life. Now…do you all see why corporate monopolies are dangerous?” tweeted Dr Amit Arya, a palliative care physician at the Brampton Civic Hospital in southern Ontario.

The rage that many customers expressed online was picked up by consumer advocates and critics, who called for both a formal inquiry to be conducted by the industry’s chief regulatory agency and for essential services to stop being vertically integrated into monopolies like the telecom industry.

“​​This unacceptable situation is why quality, diversity & reliability are key to our telecom network,” tweeted François-Philippe Champagne, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry about the company, who has about 10m wireless subscribers and 2.25m retail internet users.

“This Rogers outage highlights the dangers of our monopolized industry,” tweeted New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh, while taking a swipe at Mr Trudeau’s Liberal-ruling party: “These are the consequences of a Liberal govt that is fixated on protecting the profits of telecoms giants.”

The momentum to call for a public inquiry into the incident was quickly picked up by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, who wrote in a letter to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) that they believed it was high time for a probe of the cause of this most recent outage.

“We do not believe that we are required to justify the seriousness of the disruption faced by consumers and citizens regarding the present outage, which is manifest,” PIAC said in a letter to the CRTC.

The regulator, which noted it too was feeling the impacts from Friday’s disruption – “Please note that our phone lines are affected by the Rogers network outage” the agency tweeted Friday morning – said it was in contact with the company, but didn’t indicate whether an inquiry would be launched.

“We recognize the importance of telecommunication services to Canadians. We have been in regular contact with Rogers, their services have been restored, including emergency services,” tweeted the CRTC. “We continue to monitor this concerning situation and will be follow-up with Rogers.”

In Canada, telecommunications services are dominated by three major companies, Rogers Communications Inc, Telus Corp and BCE Inc, with the monopoly controlling 90 per cent of the wireless market coming to be colloquially referred to inside the country as the “Big 3”.

Several foreign analyses of the Canadian telecom industry conducted in recent years have time and again evidenced that customers in the North American country pay the most for cell phone services than almost anywhere else in the world.

“Prices in the Canadian wireless market … continue to be the highest or among the highest in the world,” read a 2021 report from Rewheel, a Finnish telecom research firm, who conducted an international comparison of mobile data rates. Canada’s wireless network market is a “de facto network duopoly”, the firm concluded.

The Big 3’s dominance, which has consistently forced the country’s wireless network to rank as one of the least competitive in the world, is a major contributing factor to the disproportionate monetary burden that Canadian customers face when it comes to their cell phone bills.

(One hour of your favourite binge on Netflix, for instance, using Canadian mobile data will ring up $12.55CAD in the North American country, whereas in Italy, the same programme will cost you just 43 cents CAD).

But more importantly, as was highlighted during the weekend outage, the lack of diversity in the market has created a tenuously precarious system upon which day-to-day functions can come crashing down with one, still unexplained, blip.

“Yesterday, staff who were sick had no way of notifying the hospital thanks to @Rogers mass network outage. They just did not show up. Patients suffered tremendously. So did the few staff who were present,” tweeted Birgit Umaigba, an ICU nurse working in hospitals across Toronto. “Who else thinks it’s time to end cellphone monopolies in Canada?”

The pushback from the general public and advocates also comes at a pivotal time for the telecom giant when it is already facing pressure over its anti-competition dealings.

On Friday, in the early hours of the disruption, the company was in the midst of wrapping up a two-day mediation with Shaw Communications Inc, overseen by the Competition Bureau.

Shaw, a smaller communications company whose customer count is dwarfed by the telecom titan with just about 7 million broadband, wireless, cable, home phone or satelitte subscribers, is being pursued by Rogers, which is currently attempting to win over regulator approval with a $26-billion takeover.