Rogers Wireless Services Down
Canadian Users Have Reported Data Outages, that Prevented Customers from Accessing the Wireless Voice and Data Services.
The telecom giant Rogers declared that wireless calls, SMS, and data services have been restored for “a vast majority of our customers” after a mass outage that lasted several hours yesterday.
The outage affected entire Canada and prevented customers from accessing wireless voice and data services.
The outage started at 1 AM, with the users going to social media in order to voice their frustrations.
Some police stations based in Ontario were affected by this outage. The stations issued a warning regarding the procedure that needed to be taken if people call 911.
#PRP wants to notify our community that @Rogers cellphone service is currently dealing with a Canada-wide outage. We want to inform everyone that if you call 9-1-1 and hang up, our communicators are unable to call back, so please stay on the line. #911Awareness pic.twitter.com/FWBPeh2mXs
— Peel Regional Police (@PeelPolice) April 19, 2021
Another affected communication area was related to the COVID-19 vaccine appointment, according to reports on Twitter.
I need a text confirmation to book an appointment for my vaccine but I can’t get that because Rogers is down. And there’s zero ETA when they’ll restore my service.
— Laurie (@HabsGirlSWO) April 19, 2021
Rogers did acknowledge the outage in their community forums where they state “some wireless customers” are experiencing a service interruption.
Some wireless customers are experiencing an intermittent service interruption for wireless voice and data services. Our team is working quickly to restore services as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience and will continue to provide regular updates.
In most cases, your services will restore automatically. However, if you’re still having trouble using your services, try rebooting your equipment. We have reboot instructions for our most popular products on rogers.com/support. If this doesn’t work, reach out to us in any of the ways listed at rogers.com/contact us and our team will be happy to help you.
Jorge Fernandes, Chief Technology Officer at Rogers, declared that the root cause seems to have been a new software update, thus causing a cascading effect on their network.
We have identified the root cause of the service issues and pinpointed a recent Ericsson software update that affected a piece of equipment in the central part of our wireless network. That led to intermittent congestion and service impacts for many customers across the country.
It’s important to understand that the outage had more than just the economic impact, also becoming a public safety issue as people possibly struggled to connect with the police services and other technologies like navigation.