Live data from Hacker News

Rogers network outage across Canada hits banks, businesses and consumers

reuters.com

61–70 of 403 posts

Re: Rogers network outage across Canada hits banks, businesses and consumers

#61
post #31

People in other countries probably don't understand just how powerful - and depended upon - the big telecoms are here in Canada. They have no presence outside the country - they are so bloated and inefficient they couldn't compete - but they are omnipresent here. There are lots of people who depend on Rogers for home Internet, home phone, mobile phone, TV, and home security, not to mention business services that cons…

I work in telecom and tell this to nearly everyone who asks me about Canada, and its ISP/telecom market and competition...

"Canada is an endangered species protection wildlife reserve park for dinosaur telecoms"

It's a travesty that the government is actually going to let Shaw and Rogers merge to even further concentrate power in the hands of a few families and reduce market competition.

Re: Rogers network outage across Canada hits banks, businesses and consumers

#63
post #31

People in other countries probably don't understand just how powerful - and depended upon - the big telecoms are here in Canada. They have no presence outside the country - they are so bloated and inefficient they couldn't compete - but they are omnipresent here. There are lots of people who depend on Rogers for home Internet, home phone, mobile phone, TV, and home security, not to mention business services that cons…

Most people also don't realize telcos rake in more revenue than the entire tech sector. And that it is no where close to enough to maintain or upgrade the pipes. Cloud has been built on lot of assumptions that are close to breaking point.

Re: Rogers network outage across Canada hits banks, businesses and consumers

#64
post #22
post #20

The lack of communication from Rogers for an event of this magnitude is quite something. Three tweets[0] with zero useful information so far today. The first one not coming until ~4 hours after the interruption started. [0] https://twitter.com/rogers/

They probably can't get online to tweet. /s

Seriously though, someone working there had to find a friend with a Telus hotspot to borrow, I imagine.

Re: Rogers network outage across Canada hits banks, businesses and consumers

#65
post #38

The Canadian telecom space is dominated by 3 primary companies -- Telus, Bell, and Rogers. They form an effective oligopoly that is quite detrimental to the Canadian consumer. In the ISP space, there is a bit more competition. Namely, Shaw provides additional coverage in some regions of the country. However, Rogers wants to buy Shaw. You can imagine how bad that will be for Canadians. I do wonder what the Rogers outa…

In the ISP world, what will happen with Rogers buying Shaw...

In the western provinces, AB and BC, Rogers runs a very widespread and strong LTE network. What they do not have is a DOCSIS3/coax and GPON cable TV plant. Nor do they have much terrestrial right of way for aerial plant or underground in conduits, which is where Telus (the historical copper POTS ILEC) and Shaw (the historical cable TV operator going back to the mid 1970s) are by far the strongest.

Rogers is a facilities based last mile cable operator/terrestrial operator in Ontario.

Shaw runs the landline cable tv networks in most of the metro Vancouver area. And many other small to mid sized cities in the west.

Letting Rogers control both one of the largest/strongest mobile phone networks and the only viable land line terrestrial broadband competitor to Telus by acquiring Shaw's cable tv plant is an absolute outrage.

To use a USA analogy, it's like if T-Mobile already owned RCN (Astound) in some big part of the country and then proceeded to buy Comcast.

Or if Verizon bought Spectrum (Charter/historical TWTC cable).

Re: Rogers network outage across Canada hits banks, businesses and consumers

#66
post #54

-- Started to fall to bits around 4:00am EST - got woken up by my phone non-stop glowing as news alerts about abe flooded in - got out of bed to check the news on my laptop - wasn't working - tethered to my phone & checked BGP - AS812 was announcing bogons & dropping peers like it was going out of style - thought maybe they were doing a config update - went back to bed - was incredibly surprised to see it dropped all…

Can you please show bogons learned from AS812? Thanks!

https://bgp.he.net/AS812#_bogons

They announced 216.176.216.0/21.

Re: Rogers network outage across Canada hits banks, businesses and consumers

#67
post #31

People in other countries probably don't understand just how powerful - and depended upon - the big telecoms are here in Canada. They have no presence outside the country - they are so bloated and inefficient they couldn't compete - but they are omnipresent here. There are lots of people who depend on Rogers for home Internet, home phone, mobile phone, TV, and home security, not to mention business services that cons…

I work in telecom and tell this to nearly everyone who asks me about Canada, and its ISP/telecom market and competition... "Canada is an endangered species protection wildlife reserve park for dinosaur telecoms" It's a travesty that the government is actually going to let Shaw and Rogers merge to even further concentrate power in the hands of a few families and reduce market competition.

In the article, it mentions that the Canadian government blocked this merger. I believe it said that was in April though. Has that changed, or did I misread what the reporting said? Just want to clarify in case I missed something.

Re: Rogers network outage across Canada hits banks, businesses and consumers

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Point of sale machines. Supermarkets are accepting only cash > ATMs. Several banks are incapable of dispensing cash Back to bartering.

At my local supermarket debit was down but credit card (Visa) was working.

That would make sense, since only Interac relies on Rogers, and it processes debit cards, not credit cards.

Re: Rogers network outage across Canada hits banks, businesses and consumers

#69
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's hard to understate the impact of this across all of Canada. As someone who uses Apple Pay for almost every transaction, this underlines the fragility of a "cashless society." It seems like Bitcoin and crypto fared well during this outage.

If you could get on the internet to transact your crypto, that is.

You can if you use cellular data to transact with Bitcoin, not everyone is using the Rogers network, but the banks in Canada were.

So no online banking, withdrawals, payments in affected parts Canada.

Re: Rogers network outage across Canada hits banks, businesses and consumers

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in telecom and tell this to nearly everyone who asks me about Canada, and its ISP/telecom market and competition... "Canada is an endangered species protection wildlife reserve park for dinosaur telecoms" It's a travesty that the government is actually going to let Shaw and Rogers merge to even further concentrate power in the hands of a few families and reduce market competition.

In the article, it mentions that the Canadian government blocked this merger. I believe it said that was in April though. Has that changed, or did I misread what the reporting said? Just want to clarify in case I missed something.

I would bet $100 they'll ultimately let it go through anyways due to the absurdly outsized political influence and lobbying of the equity shareholders of Shaw. One of the wealthiest families in the country.
Post reply on HN