Rogers restores service for ‘vast majority’ of customers after massive outage

Canadian telecom giant Rogers Communications says it has restored connectivity for the “vast majority” of customers after a major outage that shut down its Internet, mobile and home phone services on Friday. In An update was posted on Twitter On Saturday morning, Rogers explained that some customers “may experience delays in receiving full service” as it works to get everyone back online.

The outage began at 5 a.m. on Friday, and continued throughout the day and into the evening. Internet Disruption Tracker at the time of outage netblock found That it brought down about a quarter of Canada’s connectivity.

According to the CBC, Rogers has approximately 9 million mobile subscribers and provides cable and Internet access to about 3 million people. In addition to affecting customers of Rogers’ mobile subsidiaries, Fido and Chattar, it also unplugged several essential services across the country, leading to interference. with 911 call, debit card transactionincluding ATMs, and government agencies Canadian Passport Office And revenue agency,

a chart shared by netblock, which shows real-time Internet traffic data in Canada, shows that Rogers began restoring connectivity around 12AM ET on Saturday morning. Internet traffic data from Cloudflare, a company specializing in content delivery and DDoS mitigation, exhibits a similar pattern, with Internet traffic resuming at midnight and rising to near-normal levels.

Interac, one of the banking networks affected by the outage, said that its services are available again. The company powers a large number of debit cards, ATMs and electronic fund transfers across Canada, a service Interac recently announced has reached more than a billion transactions. Interac says it plans to “add a supplier” to strengthen its “existing network redundancy” to help prevent its services from going offline in the case of another outage.

Rogers has yet to give a reason for the outage, but the CBC reports that Canada’s communications security establishment says there is “no sign” of a cyberattack. Cloudflare experts also said that the outage was likely caused by “an internal error, not a cyberattack.” They speculate that this limitation may be due to a problem with the Gateway Protocol (BGP), a system that controls the flow of traffic over the Internet. The BGP also played a role in the shutdown of Facebook’s services last year.

“Once again, we sincerely apologize for the disruption caused to our customers and we will actively credit all customers,” Rogers said. “You do not need to contact us for credit as it will be automatically applied to your account.”