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Major outage at Amazon disrupts businesses across the U.S. – CP24 Toronto's Breaking News

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Frank Bajak And Barbara Ortutay, The Associated Press


Published Wednesday, December 8, 2021 7:34AM EST


Last Updated Wednesday, December 8, 2021 7:34AM EST

A major outage in Amazon’s cloud computing network Tuesday severely disrupted services at a wide range of U.S. companies for more than five hours, the latest sign of just how concentrated the business of keeping the internet running has become.

The incident at Amazon Web Services mostly affected the eastern U.S., but still impacted everything from airline reservations and auto dealerships to payment apps and video streaming services to Amazon’s own massive e-commerce operation. That included The Associated Press, whose publishing system was inoperable for much of the day, greatly limiting its ability to publish its news report.

Amazon has still said nothing about what, exactly, went wrong. In fact, the company limited its communications Tuesday to terse technical explanations on an AWS dashboard and a brief statement delivered via spokesperson Richard Rocha that acknowledged the outage had affected Amazon’s own warehouse and delivery operation but said the company was “working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.”

Roughly five hours after numerous companies and other organizations began reporting issues, the company said in a post on the AWS status page that it had “mitigated” the underlying problem responsible for the outage, which it did not describe. It took some affected companies hours more to thoroughly check their systems and restart their own services.

Amazon Web Services was formerly run by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who succeeded founder Jeff Bezos in July. The cloud-service operation is a huge profit center for Amazon. It holds roughly a third of the $152 billion market for cloud services, according to a report by Synergy Research — a larger share than its closest rivals, Microsoft and Google, combined.

To technologist and public data access activist Carl Malamud, the AWS outage highlights how much Big Tech has warped the internet, which was originally designed as a distributed and decentralized network intended to survive mass disasters such as nuclear attack.

“When we put everything in one place, be it Amazon’s cloud or Facebook’s monolith, we’re violating that fundamental principle,” said Malamud, who developed the internet’s first radio station and later put a vital U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission database online. “We saw that when Facebook became the instrument of a massive disinformation campaign, we just saw that today with the Amazon failure.”

Widespread and often lengthy outages resulting from single-point failures appear increasingly common. In June, the behind-the-scenes content distributor Fastly suffered a failure that briefly took down dozens of major internet sites including CNN, The New York Times and Britain’s government home page.

Then in October, Facebook — now known as Meta Platforms — blamed a “faulty configuration change” for an hours-long worldwide outage that took down Instagram and WhatsApp in addition to its titular platform.

This time, problems began midmorning on the U.S. East Coast, said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik Inc, a network intelligence firm. Netflix was one of the more prominent names affected; Kentik saw a 26% drop in traffic to the streaming service.

Customers trying to book or change trips with Delta Air Lines had trouble connecting to the airline. “Delta is working quickly to restore functionality to our AWS-supported phone lines,” said spokesperson Morgan Durrant. The airline apologized and encouraged customers to use its website or mobile app instead.

Dallas-based Southwest Airlines said it switched to West Coast servers after some airport-based systems were affected by the outage. Customers were still reporting outages to DownDetector, a popular clearinghouse for user outage reports, more than three hours after they started. Southwest spokesman Brian Parrish said there were no major disruptions to flights.

Toyota spokesman Scott Vazin said the company’s U.S. East Region for dealer services went down. The company has apps that access inventory data, monthly payment calculators, service bulletins and other items. More than 20 apps were affected.

Also according to DownDetector, people trying to use Instacart, Venmo, Kindle, Roku, and Disney+ reported issues. The McDonald’s app was also down. But the airlines American, United, Alaska and JetBlue were unaffected.

Madory said he saw no reason to suspect nefarious activity. He said the recent cluster of major outages reflects how complex the networking industry has become. “More and more these outages end up being the product of automation and centralization of administration,” he said. “This ends up leading to outages that are hard to completely avoid due to operational complexity but are very impactful when they happen.”

It was unclear how, or whether, the outage was affecting the federal government. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in an email response to questions that it was working with Amazon “to understand any potential impacts this outage may have for federal agencies or other partners.”

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Telus prioritizing ‘most important customers,’ avoiding ‘unprofitable’ offers: CFO

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Telus Corp. says it is avoiding offering “unprofitable” discounts as fierce competition in the Canadian telecommunications sector shows no sign of slowing down.

The company said Friday it had fewer net new customers during its third quarter compared with the same time last year, as it copes with increasingly “aggressive marketing and promotional pricing” that is prompting more customers to switch providers.

Telus said it added 347,000 net new customers, down around 14.5 per cent compared with last year. The figure includes 130,000 mobile phone subscribers and 34,000 internet customers, down 30,000 and 3,000, respectively, year-over-year.

The company reported its mobile phone churn rate — a metric measuring subscribers who cancelled their services — was 1.09 per cent in the third quarter, up from 1.03 per cent in the third quarter of 2023. That included a postpaid mobile phone churn rate of 0.90 per cent in its latest quarter.

Telus said its focus is on customer retention through its “industry-leading service and network quality, along with successful promotions and bundled offerings.”

“The customers we have are the most important customers we can get,” said chief financial officer Doug French in an interview.

“We’ve, again, just continued to focus on what matters most to our customers, from a product and customer service perspective, while not loading unprofitable customers.”

Meanwhile, Telus reported its net income attributable to common shares more than doubled during its third quarter.

The telecommunications company said it earned $280 million, up 105.9 per cent from the same three-month period in 2023. Earnings per diluted share for the quarter ended Sept. 30 was 19 cents compared with nine cents a year earlier.

It reported adjusted net income was $413 million, up 10.7 per cent year-over-year from $373 million in the same quarter last year. Operating revenue and other income for the quarter was $5.1 billion, up 1.8 per cent from the previous year.

Mobile phone average revenue per user was $58.85 in the third quarter, a decrease of $2.09 or 3.4 per cent from a year ago. Telus said the drop was attributable to customers signing up for base rate plans with lower prices, along with a decline in overage and roaming revenues.

It said customers are increasingly adopting unlimited data and Canada-U.S. plans which provide higher and more stable ARPU on a monthly basis.

“In a tough operating environment and relative to peers, we view Q3 results that were in line to slightly better than forecast as the best of the bunch,” said RBC analyst Drew McReynolds in a note.

Scotiabank analyst Maher Yaghi added that “the telecom industry in Canada remains very challenging for all players, however, Telus has been able to face these pressures” and still deliver growth.

The Big 3 telecom providers — which also include Rogers Communications Inc. and BCE Inc. — have frequently stressed that the market has grown more competitive in recent years, especially after the closing of Quebecor Inc.’s purchase of Freedom Mobile in April 2023.

Hailed as a fourth national carrier, Quebecor has invested in enhancements to Freedom’s network while offering more affordable plans as part of a set of commitments it was mandated by Ottawa to agree to.

The cost of telephone services in September was down eight per cent compared with a year earlier, according to Statistics Canada’s most recent inflation report last month.

“I think competition has been and continues to be, I’d say, quite intense in Canada, and we’ve obviously had to just manage our business the way we see fit,” said French.

Asked how long that environment could last, he said that’s out of Telus’ hands.

“What I can control, though, is how we go to market and how we lead with our products,” he said.

“I think the conditions within the market will have to adjust accordingly over time. We’ve continued to focus on digitization, continued to bring our cost structure down to compete, irrespective of the price and the current market conditions.”

Still, Canada’s telecom regulator continues to warn providers about customers facing more charges on their cellphone and internet bills.

On Tuesday, CRTC vice-president of consumer, analytics and strategy Scott Hutton called on providers to ensure they clearly inform their customers of charges such as early cancellation fees.

That followed statements from the regulator in recent weeks cautioning against rising international roaming fees and “surprise” price increases being found on their bills.

Hutton said the CRTC plans to launch public consultations in the coming weeks that will focus “on ensuring that information is clear and consistent, making it easier to compare offers and switch services or providers.”

“The CRTC is concerned with recent trends, which suggest that Canadians may not be benefiting from the full protections of our codes,” he said.

“We will continue to monitor developments and will take further action if our codes are not being followed.”

French said any initiative to boost transparency is a step in the right direction.

“I can’t say we are perfect across the board, but what I can say is we are absolutely taking it under consideration and trying to be the best at communicating with our customers,” he said.

“I think everyone looking in the mirror would say there’s room for improvement.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.

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TC Energy cuts cost estimate for Southeast Gateway pipeline project in Mexico

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CALGARY – TC Energy Corp. has lowered the estimated cost of its Southeast Gateway pipeline project in Mexico.

It says it now expects the project to cost between US$3.9 billion and US$4.1 billion compared with its original estimate of US$4.5 billion.

The change came as the company reported a third-quarter profit attributable to common shareholders of C$1.46 billion or $1.40 per share compared with a loss of C$197 million or 19 cents per share in the same quarter last year.

Revenue for the quarter ended Sept. 30 totalled C$4.08 billion, up from C$3.94 billion in the third quarter of 2023.

TC Energy says its comparable earnings for its latest quarter amounted to C$1.03 per share compared with C$1.00 per share a year earlier.

The average analyst estimate had been for a profit of 95 cents per share, according to LSEG Data & Analytics.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:TRP)

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BCE reports Q3 loss on asset impairment charge, cuts revenue guidance

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BCE Inc. reported a loss in its latest quarter as it recorded $2.11 billion in asset impairment charges, mainly related to Bell Media’s TV and radio properties.

The company says its net loss attributable to common shareholders amounted to $1.24 billion or $1.36 per share for the quarter ended Sept. 30 compared with a profit of $640 million or 70 cents per share a year earlier.

On an adjusted basis, BCE says it earned 75 cents per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of 81 cents per share in the same quarter last year.

“Bell’s results for the third quarter demonstrate that we are disciplined in our pursuit of profitable growth in an intensely competitive environment,” BCE chief executive Mirko Bibic said in a statement.

“Our focus this quarter, and throughout 2024, has been to attract higher-margin subscribers and reduce costs to help offset short-term revenue impacts from sustained competitive pricing pressures, slow economic growth and a media advertising market that is in transition.”

Operating revenue for the quarter totalled $5.97 billion, down from $6.08 billion in its third quarter of 2023.

BCE also said it now expects its revenue for 2024 to fall about 1.5 per cent compared with earlier guidance for an increase of zero to four per cent.

The company says the change comes as it faces lower-than-anticipated wireless product revenue and sustained pressure on wireless prices.

BCE added 33,111 net postpaid mobile phone subscribers, down 76.8 per cent from the same period last year, which was the company’s second-best performance on the metric since 2010.

It says the drop was driven by higher customer churn — a measure of subscribers who cancelled their service — amid greater competitive activity and promotional offer intensity. BCE’s monthly churn rate for the category was 1.28 per cent, up from 1.1 per cent during its previous third quarter.

The company also saw 11.6 per cent fewer gross subscriber activations “due to more targeted promotional offers and mobile device discounting compared to last year.”

Bell’s wireless mobile phone average revenue per user was $58.26, down 3.4 per cent from $60.28 in the third quarter of the prior year.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:BCE)

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