Rogers Shutdown

Last week I woke up and tried to say good morning to my coworkers over my work iPad, but found I couldn't get a signal. I switched over to Google chat on my work laptop but couldn't get a signal with it, either. Decided to disconnect and switch to data on the iPad, and still nothing. I went out to the Iron Horse Trail, sat on a bench and managed to connect with my personal cell phone using data, where I was able to connect with a few of my coworkers who were having similar difficulties.

The entire agency had been impacted. All our work phones were down. Turns out that one of Canada's largest networks had a nationwide shutdown. Canada is ruled by three major providers: Bell, Telus and Rogers. Even though there are a variety of other names, like Kudo, Fido, and Virgin, they tend to be owned by the big three. Even though I use a provider that is independent from them, it's still reliant on Rogers infrastructure, so I got shut down too. The reason I couldn't get data from my apartment is because I live in a basement and have a terrible connection other than WiFi. 

Our agency and my team sent an email explaining the situation, which is very ironic to explain why the Internet isn't working over email. Even though Rogers should hypothetically impact only one third of the connections, it felt like more than half of the people were impacted. We managed to host our usual group but only me and one other facilitator were able to be there, and I had to be outside and do it over my phone.

I wound up talking to a lot of people that were walking by on the trail. Somebody asked me if the Internet was back. Somebody asked me if I'd witnessed a car accident he'd just been in (I hadn't). Somebody sat down next to me and speculated about Russia attacking our satellite-based services.

I connected with someone from a country overseas (won't specify where, just for vague privacy reasons). They told me the Internet had been lost there as well and that they believed it was a worldwide phenomenon. Since I was just hearing this after that other guy was speculating about Russia attacking satellites, I was sufficiently spooked. Even though I'd been previously informed that it was just one Canadian company that had been taken down.

There were issues with people being able to contact emergency services. Business payment systems were down, relying on people to pay cash. Since the pandemic's initial concern with surface transmission and the subsequent call to get people to stop using cash, not too many people had it handy. 

I had to go somewhere after work, and I wondered if the light rail would be able to accept payment from me. It did, but at first it confirmed me as a University of Waterloo student (which I am, but I'm not attending enough courses to get a funded pass). The voiceover wasn't able to announce when the next train would arrive, but had a generic message about intervals between arrivals. Also, weirdly the machines had spat out a bunch of receipts on both ends. I also saw some electronic bus signs showing weird code instead of bus schedules. I guess Grand River Transit uses Rogers.

People got their connections back in intervals. My mother and brother got theirs back the following morning. We were disconnected for three days.

Canada has terrible service providers. We have some of the highest prices on the planet and we still managed a nationwide shutdown. Rogers has said it was triggered by a maintenance update. I don't know if that's a vague and veiled reason or if it was actually that mundane.