Canada’s tax collection agency has lost phone service. The country’s largest airline, Air Canada, reported technical problems at its call centers. Even the Canadian telecom regulator he said his phone lines were affected.
Police in the city of Winnipeg he asked Rogers users should call 911 in an emergency to try to locate landlines or phones on another network.
Rogers Communications said late Friday it was making “meaningful progress” toward restoring service, but could not say when networks would be fully restored.
“Many of our wireless customers are starting to see service come back,” said company president Tony Staffieri. he said in the statement. “I want to sincerely apologize for this service outage and the impact it has had on people from coast to coast.”
This was the second breach at the provider for a little over a year. Critics pointed to Friday’s outages as evidence of more competition in Canada’s telecommunications industry. With more than 11 million wireless subscribers, Rogers is one of the three companies that dominate the Canadian market.
Canada’s Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne called the situation “unacceptable” and he said overnight, he said he conveyed the “frustration of millions of Canadians” to Rogers’ CEO.
With the failure of government services, including the passport office, Conservative lawmaker Michelle Rempel Garner said the latest break showed potential “national weakness” due to limited competition.
Gordon Barton, who attended the music festival over the weekend, spoke to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. she had put some cash on her card to spend, but was no longer able to use it.
“But maybe that’s not a bad thing,” he said he joked. “I don’t think a cash-only system is the answer,” he said, “but it’s scary how quickly things are collapsing.”
Vancouver International Airport he said Travelers could not pay for meals or use ATMs in their terminals. A domestic airline in the north he said was unable to contact passengers with flight updates.
The concern also prompted a healthcare network in Toronto to ask on-call doctors to “physically come to the hospital for a shift” on Friday.
Meanwhile, at a venue in the city, a disappointed crowd was left outside after the Weeknd’s concert was postponed at the last minute due to disruption.
“I’m devastated and heartbroken,” the Canadian singer tweeted Friday night. “We’ve been on location all day, but it’s out of our hands because of the Rogers cut.”
