raymac46 Posted July 10, 2022 Share Posted July 10, 2022 Along with about 10 million other Canadians, I was knocked offline for hours on Friday. Rogers Communications messed up its network with a botched upgrade and I lost home phone, mobile phone, SMS messaging, and Internet. I had a small subset of cable TV channels operating. Rogers was not saying why but many analysts think it was a BGP issue similar to the Facebook meltdown last year. In addition to my personal problems, most 9-1-1 calls, emergency medical services, Interac/credit card payments, gas stations, grocery stores, shopping malls etc. were all compromised. I got mobile back late Friday, Internet and home phone was back early Saturday, and by Saturday night TV was back to normal. The problems with dealing with a monopoly for all my communications. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 10, 2022 Author Share Posted July 10, 2022 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-rogers-ceo-says-maintenance-update-caused-fridays-daylong-national/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted July 10, 2022 Share Posted July 10, 2022 2 hours ago, raymac46 said: The problems with dealing with a monopoly for all my communications. Can you get another company for cell phone? Or is the price because you bundle everything extremely good? If our cable goes out, we lose tv and internet but I can at least get online with cell service. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 10, 2022 Author Share Posted July 10, 2022 Well when it works Rogers is the best mobile supplier in my limited coverage area. The only alternative would be Bell and then I'd be paying more as I get bundle discounts with Rogers. My son in law has Telus for his work phone and was unaffected. He usually works from home but on Friday he went into the office because his work Internet is not supplied through Rogers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted July 10, 2022 Share Posted July 10, 2022 Ah... technology and, of course, the idiots who maintain it... Wonderful! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 11, 2022 Author Share Posted July 11, 2022 (edited) Where I live there are really only two options for telecommunications - Mr. Rogers and Ma Bell. At one time I had both of them. I have always been a Rogers cable TV & mobile phone customer, but Internet and home phone I had with Bell. Over the years Rogers got better than Bell with Internet, and home phone could be bundled to save a few bucks so I ended up exclusively with Rogers. Other folks migrated to Bell. To switch would mean uprooting all my network infrastructure in the house and replacing modem, router, cable boxes, etc. And who's to say the other guy won't screw up next time? Edited July 11, 2022 by raymac46 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 11, 2022 Author Share Posted July 11, 2022 On the other end of the spectrum is the most technically illiterate person I know - my 92 year old mother in law who lives in Kingston. Not judging her, it is what it is. She has no mobile phone at all. Her land line is with Bell - same old telephone service she's had since 1960. Cable TV with Cogeco - her only option and the worst cable co. I have ever seen. My brother in law put in a brain dead Bell DSL gateway so that family members have Internet access when they visit. She never uses it of course. She goes weeks with bad cable reception because she can't reboot the cable box. She could make phone calls fine last Friday but nobody in the family could receive them because we're all with Rogers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted July 11, 2022 Share Posted July 11, 2022 My 84 year old sister-in-law is like that. She has a cell phone only because she can't afford a wired phone. She only uses it for calls. If she forgets to plug it in to charge, she has no phone. She doesn't know how to do email or send texts. She doesn't have a computer. She has cable tv service and when it goes out, she calls us. <sigh> She managed to break a working DVD player by putting in 2 DVDs: one in the tray and one below the tray. I still can't figure out how she managed that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 11, 2022 Author Share Posted July 11, 2022 We were lucky that my wife was visiting her in Kingston last Friday so she told my MIL that there was no use phoning and we would not be able to phone her till things were sorted. The worst thing for my MIL is that she has to run around to the bank to get cash to pay the slightest bill. Banks don't work the way they did in 1957. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted July 12, 2022 Share Posted July 12, 2022 Hah, my s-i-l insists on driving to pay her monthly cell phone bill - no monthly auto pays for her! If she forgets, which she has in the past, she has no phone. She also insists on driving to the bank and moving some of her Social Security check from one account to the other EVERY MONTH! My Mom at least had the bank auto transfer a certain amount every month from 1 account to another about 3 days after her SS check was electronically deposited in one account. (The bank my s-i-l uses is the same bank my Mom used - different cities - but it would work.) I'm not sure what my s-i-l will do when her 20 year old car decides to finally call it quits. Knowing her, she'll probably expect her daughter to drive her around to do things that can be done automatically. Perhaps then her daughter will put her foot down and tell my s-i-l that she has to have these two things done automatically. Can I assume that the burden for doing the bank things falls on your wife? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 12, 2022 Author Share Posted July 12, 2022 Wife and brother in law. They are the only ones who understand my MIL's byzantine finances. BIL does her taxes and she gives him cash which I assume he then deposits and then does an etransfer to the gov't. She pays everything by cash, has no credit cards or for that matter credit rating. Some things like cable TV we just pay for her as a Christmas gift each year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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