The significance of the Internet in our daily lives is undeniably prominent, as shown by the impact of the Rogers outage in Canada.
On the 8th of July around 08:30 GMT, the Canadian communications and media company, Rogers, suffered from an outage that impacted the whole country.
It has been reported that the outage lasted for approximately 15 to 20 hours. The communications company is one of Canada’s mostly used, which emphasizes the level of disruptions. According to recent statistics, the company Rogers had nearly 11 million wireless subscribers.
The consequence of the outage was conspicuous, with all sectors of the country being affected. As a result of the outage, it has been reported that many disruptions consequently took place.
Events and concerts were cancelled. Operations and passport control like the ArriveCAN app, the country’s online platform used to allow travelers to enter the country, were disrupted. Ultimately, there was a disorder in border control at airports. Government services, banking systems, and internet services were all negatively obstructed.
Cashless systems in stores, restaurants, cafes, and more were unable to function as well. Instead, customers had no choice but to use cash during payment. Internet services were not working either, leading to everyone heading to cafes and restaurants for free wireless connection in order to go on about their daily life.
Moreover, the emergency services were also unreachable which was a high risk in case of a serious risk. This was extremely nerve-wracking for many people who were required to call 911 for an ambulance or the police.
Rogers publicly announced shortly after the outage that the reason for that caused the outage was a system error. After updating their maintenance, the network system led to a crash. The communications company publicly apologized and stated that they understood the severity of the consequences of the outage. A few days after the outage on Tuesday, Rogers announced it will compensate customers with five days of free service.
The extremity of the disturbance, chaos and disorganization that occurred as a result of the outage is just another sign that highlights the significance of the internet today. With internet services down, everyday life is disrupted, and there lays extreme difficulties for people to be able to go on about their daily life calmly.
It is to be noted that this is the second time within the past year that the company has dealt with an outage.