Breadcrumb Trail links
- News
- Local news
Rogers said late Saturday afternoon that its “networks and systems are close to fully operational” and the cause of the nationwide outage was being investigated.
Rogers mobile and internet customers were hit by internet outages across Canada Friday, July 8, 2022. Photo by Peter J. Thompson /Postmedia
Article content
Calgary businesses have a fresh supply of open tabs and I-owe-you after a nationwide Rogers Communications outage left many unable to accept debit card payments for most of Friday.
Advertisement 2
This ad has not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Article content
Services at the Toronto-based telecommunications giant went down Friday morning, leaving many customers without Internet or phone access and disrupting the availability of 911 services and debit transactions across the country. Service was mostly restored by Saturday morning.
“Today things are better. We just dealt with it yesterday,” Jamesons Pub owner Harry Dimitriadis told Postmedia on Saturday. “It definitely wasn’t ideal. It slows everything down. This slows down the service; this slows down the whole operation.
Deborah Yedlin, president and CEO of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, called it a “nightmare” scenario for local businesses as the Calgary Stampede kicked off Friday, which rings true for the manager of Red’s Diner, a Ramsay breakfast joint near the Stampede grounds. .
Advertising 3
This ad has not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Article content
“It was a very difficult time for us,” Nicole Casey said. “We had people saying, ‘I have no credit and no money,’ and the ATMs wouldn’t let them withdraw money.” It was just awful.”
The run is generally a big boost for businesses in and around the festival, but Casey and Dimitriadis said things are off to a slower start after the speed bump from Day 1. Both businesses are left scrambling to close unpaid bills left over from the outage.
“Some people promised they would come back and pay for it … or we just had to advertise it — unfortunately, the business will pay for it,” Casey said.
“It’s kind of nice that it was only the first day; we usually get busier during the week as the Stampede goes on and I’m so happy it was just that day. … We’re rebuilding and moving on, but you can tell yesterday definitely took a toll.”
Advertising 4
This ad has not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Article content
Dimitriadis said he wasn’t too worried about the open tabs, saying many were regulars he believed would return soon. He noted numerous interactions he overheard as the business crowd flocked to lunch unwillingly, glued to their devices and unable to connect with colleagues or check their work email during lunch.
“You could literally see (people) panicking because of the anxiety they were feeling. We’re all real-time these days, aren’t we?” he said, adding that he also felt it as he made his way between the pub’s two locations, having to stop to find WiFi so he could check in with staff you are
“I’m a Rogers customer, so I didn’t get emails, I didn’t get texts. … It’s shocking how exposed we are when we don’t have any ability to access our technology right now.”
Advertising 5
This ad has not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Article content
Many businesses across Canada were unable to accept debit card transactions Friday due to an outage in the Rogers Communications network. Photo by Halfpoint/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Despite opening day payment issues, the Calgary Stampede broke its Day 1 daily attendance record with 130,177 people through the doors. In 2019, the first day of the Stampede saw 127,777 admissions.
“I think like everyone yesterday, we were greatly affected by Rogers … a lot of people were affected in terms of our guests, but also our vendors,” Stampede spokeswoman Kristen Anderson said.
“We had a lot of ATMs on hand and accepted different forms of payment, so it was a challenge but we tried to overcome it as best we could.”
Anderson said debit services at the Stampede were back up and running on Saturday.
Calgary Nose Hill MP Michelle Rempel Garner is pushing for a government inquiry to determine how the outage occurred to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Rempel Garner has previously called for regulatory reform in the Canadian telecommunications industry.
“This disruption highlights another potential risk provided by the current federal regulatory structure.” This is a potentially significant national vulnerability to a prolonged service disruption given the lack of diversity in telecommunications providers in Canada,” she wrote in a Friday letter to members of the federal Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.
Advertising 6
This ad has not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Article content
I have just written to all the MPs who sit on the Standing Committee on Industry and asked them to hold an emergency committee meeting to get to the bottom of the Rogers disruption and make sure it doesn’t happen again. I have written a proposal that they can accept. https://t.co/gFCyAG7Q7A
— Michelle Rempel Garner (@MichelleRempel) July 9, 2022
Late Saturday afternoon, Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri said service had been restored and that the company’s “networks and systems are close to being fully operational.” In a written statement, Staffieri said the company continues to monitor its network for issues and investigate the root cause of the issues.
“We now believe we have narrowed down the cause to a network system failure following a maintenance update on our core network that caused some of our routers to malfunction early Friday morning,” he said.
Staffieri apologized for the disruption, adding that “we are particularly concerned that some customers are unable to contact the emergency services and we are treating the issue as an urgent priority”.
Rogers said it will proactively credit customers for the outage, but did not provide details on the amount or how many customers were affected. The company said it was aware of spam text messages claiming to offer credit and that customers would be credited automatically.
— With files from The Canadian Press
mrodriguez@postmedia.com
Twitter: @michaelrdrguez
Share this article on your social network
Advertisement 1
This ad has not yet loaded, but your article continues below.
Sign up to receive daily breaking news from the Calgary Herald, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.
By clicking the signup button, you agree to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails. Postmedia Network Inc. | 365 Bloor Street East, Toronto, Ontario, M4W 3L4 | 416-383-2300
Thanks for signing up!
A welcome email is on its way. If you don’t see it, please check your spam folder.
The next issue of the Calgary Herald Headline News will be in your inbox soon.
We encountered a problem registering you. Please, try again
Comments
Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourages all readers to share their views on our articles. Comments can take up to an hour to be moderated before they appear on the site. Please keep your comments relevant and respectful. We’ve enabled email notifications – you’ll now receive an email if you get a reply to your comment, there’s an update to a comment thread you’re following, or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information and details on how to adjust your email settings.
Add Comment