TORONTO — An outage on Friday at Rogers, one of Canada’s largest telecommunications companies, caused significant internet, cable and cellphone disruptions, mostly in Ontario and Quebec, the country’s most populous provinces.
The outage affected emergency services and some police services, including law enforcement agencies in Toronto and Ottawa, which were warning that some Rogers customers might not be able to connect to 911 calls.
The company did not provide any details about the cause of the outage or an estimated time when service would be restored.
“At this moment, we have no cause to believe that the Rogers outage is related to a cyberattack,” Audrey Champoux, a spokeswoman for the federal public safety minister, said in an email.
Frustration caused by the outage, which as of Friday evening had lasted more than 12 hours, was felt even by those who were not Rogers customers. Banking services were interrupted by the downed network. Some courthouses postponed virtual hearings.
Passport Canada said the outage was also affecting some of its call centers at a time when the summer travel season had increased passport requests. And a hotly anticipated concert by the pop star and Toronto native The Weeknd, the first stop on his world tour at the Rogers Centre arena, was postponed.
“We acknowledge the impact our outage is having on your life,” the company said in a statement Friday evening. “We have every technical resource and partner fully deployed to solve the problem.”
It added that all customers could expect to receive payment credits.
Rogers has tens of millions of customers across Canada and about 23,000 employees, and is seeking to expand. The company is in the midst of trying to acquire Shaw Communications, in what would be one of the largest telecom takeovers in Canada.
François-Philippe Champagne, the federal minister of innovation, science and industry, said he spoke to the Rogers chief executive to express the “frustration of millions of Canadians.”
“This unacceptable situation is why quality, diversity and reliability are key to our telecom network,” he said in a statement posted to Twitter.
The Communications Security Establishment, the Canadian agency responsible for cybersecurity and other national intelligence functions, offered assistance to the company, Evan Koronewski, an agency spokesman, said.
In Hamilton, Ontario, a city west of Toronto, clerks at downtown coffee shops told growing lines of customers that they would be unable to pay with debit cards, the dominant payment form in Canada, because of the outage. Those without cash faced challenges since many nearby bank machines were also down.
Ian Austen contributed reporting from Hamilton, Ontario.
