Mobile, Internet service mostly back in Canada after outage

People crowd at Starbucks to use its free wifi on the Bell network, during a major outage of Rogers Communications’ mobile and Internet networks which caused widespread disruptions across Canada. (Reuters)

• The disruption started Friday morning
• In a tweet, Rogers said some customers may experience delays in regaining full service

TORONTO: Rogers Communications Inc. said Saturday it has restored mobile and Internet service for “the vast majority″ of customers after an outage that lasted more than 15 hours.
The disruption, which the Toronto-based telecommunications company offered no explanation for, started Friday morning. It left many customers without mobile and Internet service and caused trouble for 911 services, debit transactions and even Service Canada’s beleaguered passport offices.
In a tweet, Rogers said some customers may experience delays in regaining full service as its network comes back online and traffic volumes return to normal.
“Our technical teams are working hard to ensure that the remaining customers are back online as quickly as possible,” the tweet said.
“Once again, we sincerely apologize for the disruption this had caused our customers and we will be proactively crediting all customers.”
Interac said its services are fully available again after debit transactions were halted by the Rogers network outage.
Tony Staffieri, chief executive and president of Rogers, said in an open letter that the company apologizes for the service interruption but offered no explanation for the outage or how many customers were affected.
Staffieri said Rogers is committed to understanding the cause and would make changes to meet and exceed expectations in the future.
The outage began early Friday and stretched into the evening, pushing businesses and organizations to notify customers that their operations were being affected by Rogers and that delays and service interruptions should be expected.
The outage forced the postponement of The Weeknd’s tour stop at Toronto’s Rogers Center. The Toronto date was one of only two set for Canada.
Among the most serious impacts of the outage were warnings from police in Toronto and Ottawa, who reported connection problems when people called 911.
Many Rogers customers scrambled to find Internet service, heading to coffee shops to connect and trade tales of the outage.