When The Internet Went Down For A Day In Canada

If you happen to live in Toronto like myself, then you probably have experienced the cellular service outage. That is, if your service provider is Rogers or any of its partner companies. All that luxury of making calls, texting, and most importantly, browsing the internet, which was taken for granted until now, is suddenly restricted for a day. Yet this one odd day was enough to make it to smother the headlines. It became the talk of the city, the topic of discussion in its numerous cafés. The civilians were enraged over the inconvenience caused to their routinely hustle, while businesses fretted over the significant losses they had to incur for the day.

Some claimed that the Rogers control centre was hacked, while others came up with other interesting conspiracies… There was also gossips online claiming that Rogers would refund each of its users $400 for their fail. It would have been absolutely great had it been true (sigh!)… Yet all we ever received until now is an apology email from the company’s CEO, with a promise to provide consistent quality service in the future…

Well, I wouldn’t take his word on this matter, I’m sorry! History speaks volumes…

When the internet went down in the past…

I was on my way back home from work last year, when I took out my iPhone to search for the arrival times of the buses on the route, to the junction from where I take a second commute to the bus station near my home. The maps application wasn’t loading even though my data was on, and I remember doing every possible troubleshooting techniques out there, from refreshing the app a billion times, to switching my phone on and off. The tiny bars on the top panel of the screen, beside the notch, were unlit. I tried texting my friend, but it would not go through. I panicked because I didn’t know what the hell was happening. Luckily, I was able to board the buses home on the usual route out of practice.

It had been late in the evening when I received the reply to my texts from my friend. She too was baffled by the fact that she wasn’t able to browse or text for the whole day. Perplexed, I checked the news for some light on this rare situation. I learnt that Rogers, one of the leading cellphone service providers in Canada, was experiencing a network outage. The reason wasn’t clear.

Though I wasn’t badly affected by this, on the next day at work, my colleagues were having infuriated chitchats on how they lost their way on commute, and how their phones wouldn’t let them make calls for assistance…

When the internet went down this year…

I was at home enjoying the perks of my home Wi-Fi when I got a text from my friend, also with Rogers, asking if my data was working. Apparently his wasn’t. I glanced at the top of my screen to find out that those tiny little bars were missing, and I instantly got an idea of what is going on! I didn’t have to worry this time, as I didn’t have to step out of the home that day, so there wasn’t a need of using the data to navigate. I wasn’t expecting any phone calls either.

I quickly pulled out the web browser on my iPhone to read the news. And as expected, the headlines were all about the Rogers outage, yet again… Still none of them gave a clear explanation on why this happened.

The news feed was stacked with peoples’ experiences during the outage: working men and women sharing their commute troubles in the large city, and businesses fretting over the thousands of dollars lost, as they had to close down for the day. Even the Canadian meme pages I follow on Instagram were all suddenly flooded with hilarious takes on this one-day ordeal!

The disappointing aftermath…

The very next morning, I wake up to the clink of the gmail notification on my phone. It was an email of apology from the CEO of Rogers Inc., bluntly narrating about the company’s mistake, along with another reassurance of an uninterrupted service in the future. No mention of a compensation for the inconvenience caused the previous day! Hah, what an amazing start to the day…

There were rumors on a refund of $400 dollars to its customers from Rogers, which sadly, turned out to be a hoax. Oh well, there’s another promise of free data credits circulating online, on which I have no hopes about, keeping in mind the audacity of the CEO’s email.

Mistakes do happen, be it a person or a corporation. But if it is recurring enough to cause a domino of confusions and problems, we might as well be unforgiving about it…

I put down my phone after going though all the headlines. Why wait for another mistake, I asked myself, might as well switch to a different cellular provider at the end of the year, when there will be amazing offers on data and nation-wide calling and texting. Plus, the prices will be way cheaper than what I pay now.

Well Rogers, try and fix your problems now, and compensate for the trouble, or take a step down in the competition…