Tag: rogers

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Mobile Syrup

Rogers says it will now credit subscribers for five days of service after major outage

Rogers has confirmed that it will compensate customers with five days’ worth of service following a massive national outage that began on July 8th.

“We have been listening to our customers and Canadians from across the country who have told us how significant the impacts of the outage were for them,” Rogers said in a media statement. “We know that we need to earn back their trust, and as a first step, we will be crediting our customers with the equivalent of five days service.”

Around 4:30am ET/1:30am ET on July 8th, Rogers’ entire network experienced issues, leaving millions of Canadians without access to internet, phone and other Rogers services. Further, Interac and emergency services were down while events like The Weeknd’s Toronto concert were postponed.

While Rogers said on the morning of July 9th that service was restored for “the vast majority” of people, issues have persisted for some, leading the company to now credit people for five days, up from the previously promised two days. According to Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri, the outages occurred due to a “maintenance update in our core network,” although the company hasn’t provided more information. To that point, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has ordered Rogers to provide a detailed account of the cause of the outage by July 22nd.

In the wake of the outage, Innovation, Science and Industry Minister Francois-Phillipe Champagne said on July 11th that he’s called on the “Big Three” telecoms — Rogers, Bell and Telus — to come up with a plan within 60 days to prevent similar service disruptions in the future. Specifically, he wants the carriers to reach agreements on “emergency roaming,” “mutual assistance during outages” and “a communication protocol” during telecom emergencies like the Rogers outage.

Meanwhile, a Quebec resident has launched a class-action lawsuit against Rogers, accusing the carrier of “gross negligence” while seeking $400 for each of its customers. Some people have also already received phishing scams from parties claiming to be Rogers offering them compensatory credits.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Via: CP24

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Mobile Syrup

CRTC gives Rogers 10 days to explain cause of July 8 outage

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) ordered Rogers to respond to questions about the massive July 8th network outage that took down wireless and wireline service on July 8th and through the weekend.

As reported by the Globe and Mail, the commission gave Rogers until July 22nd to offer a “detailed account” of what happened with the outage. Moreover, the CRTC asked Rogers to outline measures it would put in place to prevent a future outage.

“Today, the CRTC ordered Rogers Communications Canada Inc. (Rogers) to respond to detailed questions and provide a comprehensive explanation regarding the national service outage millions of Canadians experienced on Friday July 8, 2022,” the CRTC’s statement reads.

“We take the safety, security, and wellness of Canadians very seriously and we are responsible for ensuring that Canadians have access at all times to a reliable and efficient communications system.”

Alongside the statement, Global National’s Abigail Bimman shared a copy of a letter the CRTC sent Rogers requesting “comprehensive answers” by July 22nd. The letter notes the CRTC received “requests for a public inquiry” into the outage but does not say the CRTC is launching a public inquiry.

Source: CRTC, Globe and Mail, Abigail Bimman (Twitter)

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Mobile Syrup

Class-action lawsuit filed against Rogers over July 8th outage

Quebec resident Arnaud Verdier launched a class-action lawsuit against Rogers over the company’s massive, nationwide outage, which took down internet and wireless networks, disrupting emergency capabilities, financial services and government services on July 8th.

The outage lasted for almost the entire day. Rogers claimed it restored services for the “majority” of customers on the morning of July 9th, but issues continued for many through the weekend.

As reported by CTV News Montreal, the lawsuit was filed by law firm LPC Avocat Inc. in Superior Court on Monday in Montreal. The suit seeks $400 for members who are Rogers customers affected by the network failure, as well as for flanker-brand customers like Fido and Chatr. Although not indicated by CTV News, the lawsuit arguably should include customers of wholesale ISPs that run on Rogers’ network as well. The lawsuit does seek compensation for non-Rogers customers who could not complete debit transactions or e-transfers due to the outage taking down Interac’s payment network.

The $400 comes from two sources — $200 per member for failing to provide service, and the other $200 for Rogers’ “false representations” about having the most reliable network. Exhibits filed with the lawsuit show that Rogers allegedly instructed employees to remove advertising material with the phrase “Get on Canada’s most Reliable 5G Network” from stores on the day of the outage.

On July 9th, Rogers president and CEO Tony Staffieri released a statement attributing the outage to a botched maintenance update. In the filing, Verdier says Rogers should have tested the update before deploying it through an IT process called “staging.” The suit also accuses Rogers of deploying the update without a “rollback,” saying the outage “can only be qualified as a gross negligence on the part of Rogers.”

CTV News says Verdier filed the lawsuit because he believes Rogers’ promise of two days’ worth of credit is “wholly inadequate” for the damage suffered.

Source: CTV News Montreal

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Mobile Syrup

Industry Minister meets with Rogers CEO and other telecoms about recent outage

Toronto, Canada-September 29, 2020: Close up of Rogers sign on their headquarters building in Toronto. Rogers Communications Inc. is a Canadian communications and media company.

Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri and Canada Innovation, Science and Industry of Canada Minister Francois-Phillipe Champagne met today to discuss this past Friday’s outage, according to BNN Bloomberg. For those who don’t know, this past Friday, Rogers had an outage that affected millions of customers. Even those not with Rogers could have suffered due to Interac and other services that were down.

Following the meeting, Champagne posted on Twitter and held a virtual conference discussing some of the outcomes of the meeting. Champagne said he’d given the telecoms 60 days to consider emergency roaming, mutual assistance during outages and building a better communication protocol to inform the public and authorities during telecommunication emergencies.

The meeting had Rogers CEO Staffieri and Champagne alongside other executives from other major telecom companies “to discuss how important it is to improve the reliability of the networks across Canada,” according to the report.

Additionally, Champagne said the network failure was “unacceptable.”

Alongside Interac and Rogers customers being affected, it also caused postponements of events like the Weeknd’s concert, ISPs like TekSavvy, the CRTC lines, Canadian Blood Services website and app, Service Canada’s website and ArriveCAN, which impacted travellers arriving in Canada by land or air, CRA accounts and more.

Currently, Rogers is attempting to acquire Shaw Communications for $26 billion CAD. Minister Champagne is one of the standouts that Rogers needs approval from to acquire the telecom, so it’s possible this might affect the sale, considering Champagne’s disapproval of the situation. Champagne, alongside the Competition Bureau, are already opposed to the deal, as it might raise prices.

Reportedly, Rogers’ outage was due to a maintenance update. 

“We now believe we’ve narrowed the cause to a network system failure following a maintenance update in our core network, which caused some of our routers to malfunction early Friday morning,” Staffieri wrote. “We disconnected the specific equipment and redirected traffic, which allowed our network and services to come back online over time as we managed traffic volumes returning to normal levels.”

Seventeen hours after the outage, Rogers said it restored service “for the vast majority” of customers but notes that some may “experience a delay in regaining full service.”

Source: François-Philippe Champagne (FPC), BNN Bloomberg

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Mobile Syrup

Rogers CEO says July 8th outage caused by ‘maintenance update’

Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri published another update about Friday’s day-long outage, finally detailing some of what went wrong.

“We now believe we’ve narrowed the cause to a network system failure following a maintenance update in our core network, which caused some of our routers to malfunction early Friday morning,” Staffieri wrote. “We disconnected the specific equipment and redirected traffic, which allowed our network and services to come back online over time as we managed traffic volumes returning to normal levels.”

Moreover, Staffieri said he was “troubled” that customers weren’t able to reach emergency service during the outage and said Rogers is addressing the issue “as an urgent priority.”

Finally, Staffieri laid out three pillars of the company’s action plan following the outage. First, the company plans to fully restore all services. Staffieri said this was nearly finished, but the company is still monitoring stability across the network.

Next, Rogers intends to complete analysis and testing of the root cause of the outage. Part of this goal is to increase redundancy in Rogers’ network.

Finally, Rogers will make necessary changes to “increase network stability for our customers, and enhance our testing.”

You can read the CEO’s words in full here.

This is the most information Rogers has provided about the outage so far. Rogers’ network went down early on the morning of July 8th, disrupting wireless and internet services for customers, including Rogers’ flanker brands Fido and Chatr. Moreover, the outage impacted government and financial services, businesses, and even caused several events to be postponed.

Cloudflare previously shared an analysis of Rogers’ network based on internet traffic, suggesting the issue was an internal problem and not the result of a cyberattack. It appears that the analysis was correct.

Rogers also reiterated that it would automatically apply credits to compensate customers for the outage, clarifying that there would be no action required from people to claim the credit. The clarification comes as the company acknowledged ongoing scam messages using the promised credit to target customers.

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Mobile Syrup

PSA: Don’t fall for the incoming Rogers outage scams

Amid Friday’s massive Rogers service outage and subsequent restoration, the Toronto-based telecom has repeatedly promised to credit customers. However, Rogers hasn’t said how it will go about it, and now the scam messages are rolling out.

So, here’s your first official warning: do not click any links in any message you get about a credit for the Rogers outage. Honestly, that should be your default behaviour — clicking links, especially those received in unsolicited messages from untrusted sources, is one of the main ways that phishing scams work. People click the link and then provide sensitive information like login credentials to a fake website and boom! they’ve been phished.

Again, if you get a text, call, or other message from someone claiming to be from Rogers offering a credit for Friday’s outage, do not share any personal information or click any links.

So do yourself a favour and ignore these scams if you see them. Help your neighbour and spread the word. Do your part. Don’t get phished.

Of course, the thing that would most help stop these scams would be Rogers officially detailing how and when it will credit customers. Likely, the promised credits will come via your next Rogers bill — the company did promise to “proactively” credit users, which suggests people won’t need to do anything to claim the credit. Still, knowing for certain would go a long way to discrediting any scam message that goes against the official plan for crediting customers.

Speaking of credits, there’s also a question of what will happen for customers who subscribe to non-Rogers services that rely on Rogers internet. Wholesale internet service providers (ISPs) like TekSavvy come to mind. However, reports indicate Tbaytel is offering its customers a credit, which suggests wholesalers may receive a credit that could get passed along to their customers. It remains to be seen how this whole situation shakes out.

For now, stay safe out there and don’t get scammed!

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Mobile Syrup

Here are some of the major events and venues disrupted by Rogers’ outage

Yesterday was absolute chaos for most Canadians thanks to a massive, day-long Rogers outage that took down internet and wireless services and disrupted financial services, businesses, government services and more. While we previously documented some of the many services impacted by the Rogers outage, it’s also worth noting that the outage disrupted several big events slated for July 8th.

From The Weeknd to the Calgary Stampede, here are some of the surprising events impacted by Rogers:

The Weeknd

Toronto’s own The Weeknd was set to light up the Rogers Centre (formerly Skydome) on July 8th, kicking off his ‘After Hours Til Dawn’ stadium tour. Unfortunately for fans, the show got postponed.

The news came (hilariously) via a tweet from the official Toronto Blue Jays account, warning that “service outages impacting venue operations” lead to postponing the show. I particularly like how the Rogers-owned Blue Jays didn’t feel the need to specify that it was a Rogers service outage that postponed the show. The tweet promised a new show date would be announced ASAP and tickets would be honoured.

About an hour later, The Weeknd shared a message with fans on Twitter, saying he was “crushed [and] heartbroken” but that it was “out of our hands because of the Rogers outage.”

“Operations and safety are compromised and I tried my absolute best. This one hurts the most, and we will make this show happen, but unfortunately not tonight,” he wrote.

Peter Nygard

Canadian fashion mogul Peter Nygard was due to appear in a Montreal court via video conference on July 8th, but the appearance was postponed due to the Rogers outage.

Nygard faces one count each of sexual assault and forcible confinement in Quebec and is accused of 11 counts of sexual assault and three counts of forcible confinement in Toronto related to allegations from the late 1980s and mid-2000s. Nygard also faces extradition to the U.S. over sex-related charges there.

According to CBC News, prosecutor Jerome Laflamme said it was impossible to have Nygard appear in the Quebec court because of the outage. Nygard is currently detained in a Toronto jail.

Calgary Stampede

While not as big of an impact, the Rogers outage did disrupt the Calgary Stampede, which started July 8th. The official Calgary Stampede Twitter account posted a message asking attendees to “come prepared with cash or credit” because of the Rogers outage impacting some methods of payment.

Scotiabank Arena, Massey Hall, and more

Finally, several major venues went cash-only amid the outage. According to The Globe and Mail, Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena and Massey Hall tweeted notices for attendees to pre-print tickets and to arrive early because “delays are expected.”

Similarly, shopping malls like Yorkdale and Square One said some stores wouldn’t open due to the outage.

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Mobile Syrup

Rogers says services is back for ‘for the vast majority’ of its customers

Rogers kicked off Saturday morning with another update for customers following the lengthy outage that lasted most of Friday.

After previously confirming services were starting to come back online, Rogers says it has now restored service “for the vast majority” of customers but notes some may “experience a delay in regaining full service.”

“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. As our services come back online and traffic volumes return to normal, some customers may experience a delay in regaining full service. Once again, we sincerely apologize for the disruption this has caused our customers and we will be proactively crediting all customers.”

Rogers has not yet revealed what caused the outage, which took down wireless and internet services across Canada, impacting customers of Rogers and its flanker brands, Fido and Chatr, as well as financial services, government services and more.

“We are working to fully understand the root cause of this outage,” explained Rogers CEO and President Tony Staffieri in a message shared late Friday with Rogers customers, indicating the company doesn’t know what caused the problem.

Cloudflare, which has posted several details about the outage based on internet traffic patterns, believes the outage was “likely to be an internal error, not a cyber attack,” as some had suggested.

Rogers once again reiterated a commitment to credit customers for the outage, but the details remain unclear.

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Mobile Syrup

Rogers says services are ‘starting to recover’ after 17-hour outage

Rogers says its services at “starting to recover” after a nearly 17-hour outage crippled internet and mobile services across Canada.

In an update shared with MobileSyrup and on the company’s @RogersHelps Twitter account, the carrier said:

“Our wireless services are starting to recover and our technical teams are working hard to get everyone back online as quickly as possible. As our services and traffic volumes return to normal, we will continue to keep our customers updated. As previously announced, we will be proactively crediting all customers and will share more information on that process soon.”

The company has not shared a reason for the outage, although a Cloudflare report details some ideas about what happened.

Rogers’ update reiterates an earlier commitment to credit customers for the outage. The company says it will provide more details about that soon.

Some have reported seeing their services come back online, but it seems to be happening slowly and at the time of writing, my service hasn’t returned.

Rogers’ internet and mobile services went down around 4:30am ET on July 5th across Canada. The outage impacted Rogers customers and its flanker brands, Fido and Chatr. Moreover, it had a huge impact on financial services, government services, and more. You can view a full list of impacted services here.

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Mobile Syrup

Massive Rogers outage impacting internet, wireless across Canada

Rogers internet and mobile services are down for a large number of customers in Ontario and other provinces.

It’s not clear when the outage began, but reports began streaming in early Friday morning, with Ookla’s ‘Downdetector.ca’ reporting a spike starting around 4:30am. At 6:30am, Toronto police tweeted a warning that some Rogers customers may have difficulty calling 9-1-1 due to “technical difficulties” with the Rogers network.

Downdetector’s outage map shows some issues in B.C. and in Atlantic Canada, but the majority of the outage is concentrated in Ontario.

Rogers outage map, via Downdetector.ca

The Toronto Star reports that Fido customers are also impacted. It’s also worth noting that customers using internet services that run over Rogers’ network, like TekSavvy and Oxio, are also experiencing network issues.

Rogers has not yet provided a statement about the outage, and MobileSyrup has reached out to the carrier for more details.

The ‘@RogersHelps’ Twitter account has directed some users to check the company’s Community Forum for details about the outage. However, the page linked by the account doesn’t actually have any information available. Moreover, if you head to the company’s outage support page, the only way to get information is through Rogers’ support chatbot.

At the time of writing, the chatbot told me that “something went wrong” and that it would fetch a Live Chat agent to help. Some users reported difficulties with the chatbot and complained about the lack of publicly-available outage information on Rogers’ website.

Developing…