There’s a good chance you were affected by the outage for Rogers Communications on Friday, even if you’re not a customer of the big telecommunications company.
After all, the outage affected everything from Interact machines to 911 services, in addition to their telephone and internet services. If you wanted to use your debit card for a purchase on Friday, there’s a good chance it would have failed, regardless of how much money you had in your bank account.
A concert featuring prominent Canadian musician The Weeknd had to be postponed. But the biggest impact would have been the loss of 911 and health-care services in some areas, even if we didn’t feel the crunch here.
An inability to pay with a debit card or a postponed concert would suck, but they’re nowhere near as serious as interruptions to health care.
The impact on Saskatchewan likely wasn’t as strong as elsewhere, since Rogers doesn’t have a big presence down here. How many people do you know who have a Rogers cell phone? Likely not many. Our cable service, if you still have it, is likely to be through SaskTel Max or Access Communications, or through a satellite dish. (Remember when those were cool?)
I was once a Rogers customer. I was one for nearly 14 years. My cell phone was through them. Back then, the 461 prefix was actually a Rogers number. Then SaskTel gobbled it up and the Rogers customers were shuffled to a 415 number. I think 15 of us were affected.
I remember the feeling the first time I encountered someone whose number began with 461 instead of the much more common 421. Of course, that was back when cell phones aren’t as prevalent as they are now.
The biggest challenge with Rogers phone service in Saskatchewan was the lack of coverage in rural communities. It was OK in Estevan. But once I ventured more than 15 kilometres outside of the city, it shut down, until you reached Regina, Weyburn, Moose Jaw or another city. If you were driving on Highway 13 between Carlyle and the Manitoba border, and you had car problems, well, you’d have to wait for someone to pull over to help.
In all seriousness, the outage with Rogers exposed some pretty glaring issues in Canada, thanks to our over-reliance on the so-called Big 3: Rogers, Bell and Telus. Again, it’s mitigated here by the presence of SaskTel.
We’ve heard the complaints for years about the Big 3. They wield too much power. We need more competition. And when someone does step forward, they get gobbled up by one of the Big 3.
Of course, it’s rather difficult and time-consuming to start up a telecommunications company and get it into a position where it can compete with the big boys. We can come up with all of the incentives we want for competition, but it’s going to take a lot of time and capital for someone to be legitimately competitive.
In an age in which we’re paranoid about cyberattacks, Rogers just showed the world how vulnerable we really are. Imagine if someone wanting to do us harm went after the Big 3.
The loss of debit services showed how erroneous our cashless approach can be. Sure, people could still use their credit cards to pay for everything from groceries to fuel to restaurant bills, but people were in a genuine panic about not having debit. Apparently there were long lines at banks in larger centres, as those who thought they could pay for everything with Interact discovered the folly in their mentality.
We saw some humour in the situation, too. People were comparing Rogers blundering to that of Air Canada and other national airlines. Others suggested unplugging the equipment for 30 seconds and plugging it back in, a situation we’ve all found ourselves in when our tech fails.
There needs to be some measures of accountability. I don’t know if this is when a fine is the best solution. Perhaps it would be better if Rogers gave all the affected customers unlimited data for this month, or some form of a rebate for a week or even a month for interrupted services.
I feel bad for those who were negatively impacted by Friday’s outage. I can’t say that I was. But lots of people were. They deserve compensation. This is not a situation in which Rogers can apologize and hope the problem goes away.
SaskTel certainly gives us moments of frustration, but right now they look pretty good.
