Canadian telecommunications were interrupted early Friday morning, July 8, 2022, when a massive network outage at Rogers Communications shut down mobile, landline, and internet services across much of Canada for most of the day, continuing for some into the weekend. The outage resulted in a multitude of other service interruptions and impaired business operations.
Impacts of the outage are widespread across industries. Financial institutions had service interruptions and phone lines were disrupted for government agencies, hospitals and even urgent medical care, which impeded access to 911. Additionally, small and large business owners felt the far-reaching effects of the outage, which left them unable to process debit card payments and receive E-transfers, leading to a notable decrease in sales activity. Many local bank machines and ATMs were also out of order or out of cash, leaving consumers with very few payment options.
Rogers president and CEO Tony Staffieri said the company is continuing to monitor its network for issues, and that the cause of the outage is believed to be a network system failure following a maintenance update. Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne has requested the major telecommunications networks to establish a formal agreement to mitigate such outages, highlighting the extent of impact from the outage.
Although Rogers has stated that it will proactively credit all customers automatically, this will likely only cover the average $1.90 per day Rogers’ customers pay for service. It is unlikely that Rogers will compensate for financial loss suffered by businesses or other costs due to the interruption, at least without the pressure from lawsuits.
If you have suffered from financial loss due to the Rogers outage, we would like to hear from you. Please contact us by emailing [email protected] or by phoning 902-425-7330.