With files from Howard Solomon.
Rogers Communications is experiencing a mobile and internet service outage across Canada.
“An outage is impacting wireless and home services. Phone and chat support are also affected. We are working to restore as quickly as possible,” reads a notice on Rogers’ support page.
According to Downdetector, more than 20,000 reports of issues were generated starting at around 5 a.m. EST.
Most affected locations include Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Winnipeg.
While the company has yet to provide a reason for the outage, it has acknowledged it on its customer service Twitter account.
Fido, Rogers’ flanker mobile service brand, is also reporting more than 10,000 outages on Downdetector.
In a reply to a customer inquiry on Twitter, TD Canada Trust said Interac e-Transfer is down due to the outage and all banks are affected.
The Toronto police service is seeing a slowdown in operations due to the outage.
ADVISORY:
City of Toronto
– The Rogers Network is experiencing some technical difficulties
– Some people will have trouble connecting
– There are some connection problems calling 9-1-1
– We are working to resolve these issues
^dh— Toronto Police Operations (@TPSOperations) July 8, 2022
A Bell spokesperson confirmed to IT World Canada that its services are functioning normally.
Telus said on Twitter that it’s “experiencing higher than expected wait times” due to a “competitor network issue.”
Ontario-based TekSavvy, a regional internet service provider that delivers a portion of its services using Rogers’ network, also reported that its networks are down across Ontario and Quebec.
Global News has reported that the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security has contacted Rogers and “offered assistance, in the event they should need it.”
Organizations need to keep resiliency in mind
Internet interruption can be caused by a wide range of things: Hacking, misconfigurations, network congestion and even the weather.
With organizations needing not only internet connectivity for PCs and servers but also for VoIP phones, point of sales devices, industrial equipment and other IoT systems the incident shows the need for organizations to pay for a WAN internet failover/backup service. It’s offered by many major and small ISPs. A solution can involve the addition of a router to the IT network that switches to the alternate service when disruption is detected.
It can be provided in a number of ways. Assuming an organization’s provider is a wired service, the failover could be a cellular or cable internet service.
Canadian providers include Rogers, Bell, Ooma, TeraGo, ITel, Call-One, Skyway West and many more. Note this is not an inclusive list.
“This outage certainly demonstrates a number of challenges businesses need to cope with,” said Ed Dubrovsky, managing director of Cypfer, a Toronto-based incident recovery consulting firm.
Large communication service providers are not immune to cyber-attacks or critical technology infrastructure failures, he pointed out. Digital currency is exceptionally vulnerable to failures which may impact the ability to process digital payments.
An increasingly remote workforce is reliant on limited infrastructure typically from a single provider, he warned, so organizations may see an impact of entire segments of their employees disabled.
When a communication infrastructure is distrusted, the process of returning to operations may create vulnerabilities that can be exploited by in-waiting attackers, he added.
