Rogers Communications customers reporting service outages

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Services of Rogers Communications Inc. were down for thousands of users on Friday morning, the wireless provider said, after customers in Ontario and across other areas of the country reported outages beginning early in the morning.

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The outage not only knocked out service for the telecom’s private customers, but also caused problems for police, banks and government agencies.

Rogers acknowledged the outage on its RogersHelps Twitter account, saying it was “aware of issues” and working to fix them quickly.

“Our teams are fully engaged to resolve the issue as soon as possible,” it said, adding that it will continue to give updates.

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According to online tracker Downdetector Canada, there were more than 20,000 reports as of 6:45 a.m. Users were reporting problems related to internet, TV and Wi-Fi connections.

While the highest concentration came from Ontario, there were also reports of outages in Montreal, Winnipeg and Edmonton.

Early this morning Toronto police tweeted that some people were having trouble calling 911 because of Rogers’ technical difficulties.

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The outage is also affecting government services that rely on the network. Service Canada said on Twitter that some of its call centres and offices, including passport offices, are affected.

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The disruption also appeared to be impacting Interac and wholesale re-sellers of Rogers services. Toronto-Dominion Bank said it was facing system issues with its Interac e-Transfer service.

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Canadian Internet services provider Teksavvy Solutions Inc. said in a tweet that Rogers outage impacted many enterprises including itself.

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The telecom giant has about 10 million wireless subscribers and 2.25 million retail internet subscribers.

Additional reporting by Denise Paglinawan, Reuters

More to come …