The Weeknd’s concert cancelled, millions affected by major network outage in Canada

Millions of Canadians were left without Internet or mobile connectivity after one if the country’s biggest telecommunications networks failed on Friday, in an outage spanning 20 hours and counting

Millions of Canadians were left without Internet or mobile connectivity after one if the country’s biggest telecommunications networks failed on Friday, in an outage spanning 20 hours and counting.

People crowd around a Starbucks coffee shop 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, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. (REUTERS)

The countrywide outage of the Rogers network that began at around 4.30am on Friday (Eastern time) impacted not just users of mobile phones or home or business Internet subscribers, but also threw some government services offline. Transit, schools, hospitals, debit payments were among the areas adversely affected. It even led to the postponement of a concert in Toronto by the singer The Weeknd.

“I’m crushed & heartbroken. Been at the venue all day but it’s out of my hands because of the Rogers outage. Operations and safety are compromised and I tried my absolute best. This one hurts the most, and we will make this show happen, but unfortunately not tonight,” The Weeknd said in a statement.

No reason has yet attributed for the outage. However, Rogers’ president and CEO Tony Staffieri issued an apology late on Friday night, saying, “I take full responsibility for ensuring we at Rogers earn back your trust & are there to connect you to what matters.”

Rogers also announced it had made “progress” towards bringing networks back online and many wireless customers were seeing services return

But through the work day, those affected had to scramble for connectivity at coffee shops for Wifi, or sharing connections of neighbours on other networks.

The outage renewed questions over how three major companies dominate Canada’s telecom landscape. Between them, Rogers, Bell and Telus account for nearly a 90% market share. Rogers claims nearly 35% of the revenue generated in the sector, and had about 10 million mobile and another 2.5 million Internet subscribers.

The Canadian Government expressed its displeasure over the outage, as Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry Francois-Phillipe Champagne tweeted, “This unacceptable situation is why quality, diversity & reliability are key to our telecom network.”

MPs have called for Parliament to examine the matter