(Newswire.net — October 9, 2013) Vancouver, BC, Canada — If you are trying to send a text message or make a phone call in Canada or to a Canadian, you may be out of luck for the time being. The countries largest carrier, Rogers Wireless, is experiencing country wide outages, leaving users without cell phone service.
Rogers Wireless owns Fido Solutions and Chatr. Accumulatively they dominate the market place in Canada for prepaid and contracted mobile phone subscribers with more than a third of the market share.
Rogers has only confirmed limited outages in Ontario and Quebec, and they state that data is unaffected. Websites Fido.ca and Rogers.com are both down, likely to the flood of people seeking information.
Trusted sources (the writer of this article is a Fido subscriber) confirm that both text and cellular are affected and that the issue extends to British Columbia.
Canadians often bemoan the fact that the rates and customer support of all available cellular service networks are subpar in Canada compared to our American neighbours to the south. Mobile subscribers have been fighting and slowly winning the battle for regulation change impacting lengthy contracts and unfair practices for cell phone service in Canada.
As more and more Canadians are choosing to purchase a mobile plan across the border or jump through hoops to negotiate reasonable rates for their existing service, today’s outage could have a serious negative impact on Rogers Mobile and Fido Solutions.
Other nationwide carriers Bell Wireless and Telus Mobility are close competitors for those having trouble with cell phone outages, but the American companies are also creeping in with promises of lower rates and proactive customer service.
Rogers seems to be updating their Twitter account as they work through the current outage.