Rogers Network Outage Disrupts Canada Internet Access, Bank Transactions

On social media, some Rogers customers reported connectivity issues as early as 4 a.m. ET. Police in Toronto, Canada’s largest city, and in its capital, Ottawa, warned of problems connecting to police through the 9-1-1 emergency line.

Canada’s Interac system, a not-for-profit entity that operates a national debit network, said debit-card transactions online and at checkout counters weren’t available. Interac added that certain electronic payments also couldn’t be executed. “We are waiting for updates from Rogers on their resolution,” it said via its official Twitter account.

A spokeswoman for

Royal Bank of Canada,

the country’s largest bank by market valuation, said the outage is affecting some of the lender’s services.

According to corporate filings, Rogers has about 10 million wireless phone customers and over two million clients who subscribe to its high-speed internet service. Rival BCE Inc., based in Montreal, has roughly 12 million wireless phone subscribers and nearly four million internet customers.

In a recent report, the Bank of Canada said outages to internet services—especially from a cyberattack—could trigger disruptions to the country’s financial market infrastructure.

Among those affected from the Rogers outage is Canada’s telecommunications regulator. “Please note that our phone lines are affected by the Rogers network outage,” said the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. “We are monitoring the situation.”

—Vipal Monga contributed to this article.

Write to Paul Vieira at [email protected]