April 20 As one of Canada’s major telecommunications operators, Rogers Communications Inc. on April 19 a rare large-scale service outage.
The accident began on the morning of the 19th EST. A large number of the company’s users noticed outages in voice calls, text messages and wireless data services. The users experiencing the problem are located in several provinces from eastern to western Canada. Also affected are users of some of Rogers’ sub-brands.
On the social networking platform, some users complained that the disruption of mobile communications and Internet services made it impossible for people to book vaccinations, students’ online classes, and people booking takeaways. Customers can still call the “911” alarm, but the police caution not to hang up, otherwise they can not call back.
Rogers Communications Chief Technology Officer Fernandez issued a statement on the evening of the 19th to apologize to customers. He said the root cause of the accident had been identified because a recent software update by Ericsson, a network partner, had affected a device in the central part of Rogers’ wireless network, causing intermittent congestion among customers across the country and affecting services. Television, home and corporate cable Internet, as well as home phone service, are all unserviceable, he said.
Rogers said the software issue had been resolved, but wireless services needed to be phased back in. At midnight, customer service is still not fully back to normal.
Rogers, Bell and Research are considered the big three in Canada’s telecommunications industry. According to 2015 data, Rogers accounts for 33% of the country’s wireless communications market share. By 2020, Rogers has nearly 11 million wireless subscribers.
