I was waiting for the first “my relative died because we couldn’t call 911 thanks to the ROGERS outage story.
It’s a hit piece by a CBC property. Linda would have died regardless, so there’s no real point to the story other than CBC using Linda’s death to troll ROGERS, but the panic in the story is real:
CBC: A Hamilton family is in mourning after facing a life-or-death situation last week during the Rogers outage that left the country reeling, and an expert says it’s evidence of the “fragility” of Canada’s networks.
Shane Eby said his father and aunt, Gregg and Linda Eby, who are siblings and both in their 70s, were out doing their weekly errands in the city’s core on Friday morning.
Shane said it was just past 10 a.m. ET when Gregg noticed Linda wasn’t feeling well and had her sit down in a parking lot near a bank.
“He could see she was in distress and needed help, more than what my father could offer her,” Shane told CBC News.
Gregg called on a security guard from the bank who also realized Linda was in trouble.
According to Shane, the next five to 10 minutes were brutal for his father.
Without cellphone service, Gregg was “scrambling.”
Shane said his father and the security guard tried to flag down somebody nearby to help call 911, but couldn’t find anyone.
“My father started running around the street past the parking lot trying to locate people,” Shane said.
“He had to keep leaving her to try and find help,” he said, tearing up.
Shane said his father never found anyone with cellphone service, but eventually, first responders arrived.
Shane believes the security guard may have been able to get help from someone in the bank or through a landline.
It left Gregg struggling to get to the hospital, but he eventually found a taxi. Once Gregg got there, Shane said, he was “involved in the decision to take her off life-support.”
Days after Linda’s death, the family is still trying to cope with her loss.
“She was the matriarch of our family and both their parents have passed, so now my father is by himself,” Shane said, adding she had two children and had “all the stories that most people in the family don’t know.”
Shane said he never imagined people would ever have trouble getting in touch with emergency services.
He added that doctors at the hospital said Linda’s aneurysm likely would have been fatal even if Gregg had been able to call 911 right away. An aneurysm is an abnormal ballooning in the wall of a blood vessel and can rupture and cause internal bleeding.
I’m sure we’ll see a few more of these over the coming months. Stories of people desperate for medical help/interventions who called 911 with no success because ROGERS lost access to their network, CANADA WIDE, for almost two days.
I just didn’t think CBC would be first out of the gate with the clickbait collaring of ROGERS.
It’s a bullshit story but underlines the extremely dangerous telco oligopoly in Canada and the lack of consumer recourse when major outages happen in Canada.
ROGERS is covered by the 400-page service agreement you sign on to their (shotty) network. When you sign up for ROGERS/BELL/TELUS service, you check boxes and sign away your ability to hold them accountable for anything, ever, no matter what.
Stamp, Stamp, NO erasies.
It’s ironclad and buried deep within the agreement.
The good news? The Canadian Government stepped in yesterday to support the telco oligopoly to ensure more people die should one of Canada’s two bully telcos lose access to their network for any reason.
Canada’s Minister of Innovation, science and tech pretended to care yesterday by announcing he’s looking into the outage. The CRTC was on the case, which means nothing because the CRTC is stacked with telco stakeholders who won’t do shit.
I directed the companies to reach agreements on (i) emergency roaming, (ii) mutual assistance during outages, & (iii) a communication protocol to better inform the public and authorities during telecommunications emergencies.
This outage will be investigated by the CRTC as well
— François-Philippe Champagne (FPC) 🇨🇦 (@FP_Champagne) July 11, 2022
Minister Champagne is tight with the CEOs of Bell, Rogers, and Telus, so his solution is? Force the monopoly to close ranks on their trust EVEN more instead of opening up the country to increased competition AND forcing a cooperative agreement.
What minister Champagne is suggesting has ZERO consumer recourse and only further enriches the oligopoly. It’s fucked, and the Liberal Government knows it, and much like their conservative counterparts, they do not give a shit. Agin, they don’t HAVE to do anything for you other than convince you that you’re lucky to be working with them. There’s a reason they own all the MSM outlets across the country. The propaganda is free, and they shape the narrative. They want you to think you’re lucky and privileged to be on their networks, paying the highest prices in the free world.
For a service that might not work on any given Friday.
Excited for my $6 Rogers credit
— ShawnFromToronto (@shawnhawaii) July 12, 2022
Canada’s telco mafia: “More of the same, and you’ll like it.”
I can’t wait for the next story about Linda’s estate getting charged to cancel her service early. I give it a month.
DB
