Many Canadians without cell, internet service after nationwide network outage
Canadians are contending with significant cellular, internet, and cable service disruptions on Friday following an outage at Rogers Communications, one of the nation's biggest telecommunications companies. Those in Ontario and Quebec, the country's most populous provinces, are bearing the brunt of the burden, though the outage's effects can reportedly be felt nationwide, reports The New York Times.
Issues began sometime early Friday, Canada's CBC notes. It seems Rogers has yet to detail the cause of the outage or provide an estimated time frame as to when service might be restored, the Times adds.
"We know how important it is for our customers to stay connected," the company said Friday. "We are aware of issues currently affecting our networks and our teams are fully engaged to resolve the issue as soon as possible." The outage is said to be impacting some banking services and transactions, as well as police services, where callers may be unable to get through to 911, per CNBC.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
To try and circumvent the lapse in service, customers gathered in places like coffee shops and public libraries where alternative networks were offered, Reuters reports.
Meanwhile, fellow Canadian telecom company Bell took the opportunity to let its customers know "its network is just fine," joke MobileSyrup, in reference to a tweet from Bell concerning the outage.
Elsewhere, of course, the memes have already begun.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Brigid Kennedy worked at The Week from 2021 to 2023 as a staff writer, junior editor and then story editor, with an interest in U.S. politics, the economy and the music industry.
-
The dazzling coral gardens of Raja AmpatThe Week Recommends Region of Indonesia is home to perhaps the planet’s most photogenic archipelago.
-
‘Never more precarious’: the UN turns 80The Explainer It’s an unhappy birthday for the United Nations, which enters its ninth decade in crisis
-
Trump’s White House ballroom: a threat to the republic?Talking Point Trump be far from the first US president to leave his mark on the Executive Mansion, but to critics his remodel is yet more overreach
-
Google avoids the worst in antitrust rulingSpeed Read A federal judge rejected the government's request to break up Google
-
Supreme Court allows social media age check lawSpeed Read The court refused to intervene in a decision that affirmed a Mississippi law requiring social media users to verify their ages
-
Nvidia hits $4 trillion milestoneSpeed Read The success of the chipmaker has been buoyed by demand for artificial intelligence
-
X CEO Yaccarino quits after two yearsSpeed Read Elon Musk hired Linda Yaccarino to run X in 2023
-
Musk chatbot Grok praises Hitler on XSpeed Read Grok made antisemitic comments and referred to itself as 'MechaHitler'
-
Disney, Universal sue AI firm over 'plagiarism'Speed Read The studios say that Midjourney copied characters from their most famous franchises
-
Amazon launches 1st Kuiper internet satellitesSpeed Read The battle of billionaires continues in space
-
Test flight of orbital rocket from Europe explodesSpeed Read Isar Aerospace conducted the first test flight of the Spectrum orbital rocket, which crashed after takeoff
