How's Your Interac Doing? (July outage & telecomm stuff in general)

[Kilted]

I wonder what condition the statue of Ted Rogers outside the Rogers Centre is in right now.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Yes, I’m Telus

 

[The Bread Guy]

... And add Passport lines and the ArriveCan app and Klaus will get his wish......

Funny you should mention that ...

CBSA says some travellers may not be able to use ArriveCAN due to Rogers outage

Travellers may be impacted Friday by the ongoing Rogers network outage.

london.ctvnews.ca

Meanwhile, some of the latest

Rogers network resuming after major outage hits millions of Canadians

Rogers Telecommunications said its network was beginning to recover late on Friday after a 19-hourservice outage at one of Canada's biggest telecom operators shut banking, transport and government access for millions, drawing outrage from customers and adding to criticism over its industry...

www.reuters.com

NetNewsLedger - Rogers President Staffieri Takes Responsibility for Outage

TORONTO – TECH – Tony Staffieri, President and CEO of Rogers states, “We know you count on Rogers to connect you to emergency services, make payments, serve your customers, connect with work and keep in touch with friends and family. We take that responsibility very seriously and today we let...

www.netnewsledger.com

 

[lenaitch]

In fairness, Bell is skimping on maintenance too. When landlines went down in Winnipeg, they just shrugged and said “We’ll get to it when we get to it”, till the CRTC stepped in.

We used to be on dsl but gave up when it became clear that Bell has lost interest in its wired network.

We were down until about 2200 last night. Our Internet is a third-party on the Rogers network, but we still have a hard landline and our TV is satellite so at least I wasn't totally bored. We don't have mobile data.

With so much of our critical infrastructure, economy and security surrendered to the a very small handful of private companies to give us access to the Interweb, I think the government has legitimate regulatory role here to demand a certain level of robustness and redundancy to their networks.
Here's one site's take on what went down, for those who may understand it.

Cloudflare’s view of the Rogers Communications outage in Canada

An outage at one of the largest ISPs in Canada, Rogers Communications, started earlier today, July 8, 2022, and is ongoing (eight hours and counting), and is impacting businesses and consumers.

blog.cloudflare.com

 

[mariomike]

“We know you count on Rogers to connect you to emergency services."

You may, or may not, get a dial tone. These are the only real sure thing.

 

[The Bread Guy]

... With so much of our critical infrastructure, economy and security surrendered to the a very small handful of private companies to give us access to the Interweb, I think the government has legitimate regulatory role here to demand a certain level of robustness and redundancy to their networks ...

Agreed.

Politically speaking, though, a bit of a can't win.

If they do it, Ottawa'll be attacked for imposing on business.

If they don't, Ottawa is letting business run free in an almost-monopoly way - or a variation of "there they go kissing big (insert industry here)'s ass again."

 

[Edward Campbell]

Agreed.

Politically speaking, though, a bit of a can't win.

If they do it, Ottawa'll be attacked for imposing on business.

If they don't, Ottawa is letting business run free in an almost-monopoly way - or a variation of "there they go kissing big (insert industry here)'s ass again."

The parts of government that have regulatory and legal oversight of the telecommunications sector are split between Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and the CRTC; each has specific areas of expertise and authority - they used (20ish years ago) to work quite well together even though the CRTC was, in my opinion, guilty of a bit a lot of empire building.

 

[The Bread Guy]

The parts of government that have regulatory and legal oversight of the telecommunications sector are split between Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and the CRTC; each has specific areas of expertise and authority - they used (20ish years ago) to work quite well together even though the CRTC was, in my opinion, guilty of a bit a lot of empire building.

Ah, gotta love those silos, right?

It'll be interesting to see what government ends up doing, if anything, given the political calculus.

 

[Retired AF Guy]

Some Mastercards (Capital One for example) have been working all day. It seems only about half the retailers in my town know this

Went shopping yesterday morning at Farm Boy and credit cards were working. Samething in the afternoon at local bar. Fortunately for internet/Tv I have Cogeco sp no problem there.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The Army Officers Mess in Ottawa was running on a cash only basis yesterday. The credit/debit card processing terminal was dead. A neighbourhood pub near my home (Madison's - part of a Montreal based chain) was closed - they use a network based system to record all transactions, including sending orders to the kitchen and it is connected to (disconnected from, yesterday) the financial system. When the system died so did their ability to conduct business.

 

[Remius]

The Army Officers Mess in Ottawa was running on a cash only basis yesterday. The credit/debit card processing terminal was dead. A neighbourhood pub near my home (Madison's - part of a Montreal based chain) was closed - they use a network based system to record all transactions, including sending orders to the kitchen and it is connected to (disconnected from, yesterday) the financial system. When the system died so did their ability to conduct business.

During the outage we had after the big storm hit Ottawa, internet, cell, power was all out. One of our local garden centers stayed open. Processed credit cards the old fashion way and took cash.

Redundancies, even limited ones should be built into the business model. Works both ways as the pandemic showed (ie the ability to shift to online and delivery).

 

[Brad Sallows]

I think the government has legitimate regulatory role here to demand a certain level of robustness and redundancy to their networks.

Sure. Companies don't mind improving their serviceability rates, because they don't pay for it ("it" being the equipment and the people who install and support it). Consumers pay for it.

For those advocating greater public involvement, governments don't mind taking credit for improvements because they don't pay for it. Taxpayers pay for it. Or governments just let service degrade, because they prefer cutting ribbons on new projects over maintaining the stuff they cut ribbons for years or decades ago. Public health care, for example.

Keep that at front of mind.

Meanwhile, having a "Plan B" applies to users more than the suppliers. A supplier may have single points of failure, but each sole supplier/source/provider is always a single point of failure to a user.

 

[AmmoTech90]

The Starbucks I went to Kelowna yesterday had an interesting system. Take cash or try to pay with a card. If it didn't go through your order was free. Apparently the manager said Starbucks made enough money and those people's day wasn't going to be easy. Good PR there, I saw one person whose card was declined and got her coffee for free tip more in cash than her bill. Could have paid cash, decided to pay the server.
Looks like civility and compromise isn't dead everywhere.

 

[McG]

Redundancies, even limited ones should be built into the business model. Works both ways as the pandemic showed (ie the ability to shift to online and delivery).

How do you affordably build redundancy when the cost of the physical network infrastructure acts as a gatekeeper to competitors entering the industry? Mandating Bell, Rogers, Telus, and Shaw to sell discounted network access to resellers does not provide redundancy or protection against weaknesses of the backbone networks.

 

[Kat Stevens]

Drove from Brandon to Edmonton yesterday. None of the drive throughs were taking debit. Thank you, VISA for not being useless at the gas pumps at least.

 

[daftandbarmy]

How do you affordably build redundancy when the cost of the physical network infrastructure acts as a gatekeeper to competitors entering the industry? Mandating Bell, Rogers, Telus, and Shaw to sell discounted network access to resellers does not provide redundancy or protection against weaknesses of the backbone networks.

Massive government investment in the industry - looking at you, Irving and Bombardier

 

[Brad Sallows]

How do you affordably build redundancy

I took Remius's comment to refer more to user end redundancy - always being able to handle cash or credit/debit, for example.

 

[Remius]

How do you affordably build redundancy when the cost of the physical network infrastructure acts as a gatekeeper to competitors entering the industry? Mandating Bell, Rogers, Telus, and Shaw to sell discounted network access to resellers does not provide redundancy or protection against weaknesses of the backbone networks.

Plenty of ways for local businesses to build redundancies. Some adapted some didn’t. Those that don’t tend to go under.

Governments should though loosen some rules to allow for it.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Rules are less of a weak point than throwing away things that have worked for centuries just because they are superceded by new (and fragile) technology.

 

[McG]

Plenty of ways for local businesses to build redundancies. Some adapted some didn’t. Those that don’t tend to go under.

Governments should though loosen some rules to allow for it.

That sounds nice but actually says nothing about how we do it.