Article content continued

Chief technology officer Bob Berner says the problem affected network equipment and caused service interruptions for voice and text messaging services across the country.

In a statement on the company’s website, Rogers president and CEO Nadir Mohamed says he recognizes the outage was ”unacceptable” for customers.

He said technicians worked as quickly as possible to restore service and sincerely apologizes for this ”significant inconvenience.”

We have reports of voice service interruptions affecting wireless customers in ON & QC. We apologize and are working to resolve ASAP. — RogersHelps (@RogersHelps) October 9, 2013

”To thank our customers for their patience, Rogers and Fido will proactively credit all of its postpaid wireless customers for one day of service,” Mohamed said.

Rogers and Fido postpaid wireless customers, those on a contract and who pay monthly, will receive a credit on their bills.

Patricia Trott, a spokeswoman for Rogers, said in an email that customers who subscribe to post-paid service will see the credit — which will be the equivalent of one–thirtieth of their monthly wireless service fee — on “one of their next few bills.”

“We are planning on compensating pre-paid customers but haven’t worked out the details,” she added.

Rogers has about 10 million wireless customers across Canada.

Here’s what some of them were saying on social media about the outage on Wednesday night:

Damn Rogers Canada! All calls are failing! — Jerome Paradis (@JeromeParadis) October 9, 2013

Seriously getting grumpy about Rogers and Fido now. Seriously, couple hours now. — Ken Dennis (@KenDennis) October 9, 2013

@RogersHelps Neither me nor my roommate can make or receive calls from our mobiles. Is there a problem with the system? — Mark Hopkins (@markchopkins) October 9, 2013

I find it extremely humourous I got an email from #Rogers asking me to rate their service on a night when their network is down. — Ashley Knapton (@KaptinKnapton) October 9, 2013

@RogersBuzz what’s wrong with my phone – no calls or texts — Gwyn Auger (@magicassistant) October 9, 2013

Is Rogers (cell AND home phone) not working for anyone else? WTF! — Lauren M B (@laurentrouble) October 9, 2013

Others took to social news site Reddit to express their displeasure with the outage.

“I thought our insanely high prices were to maintain infrastructure, what are they doing with the money?” — comment by nicholmikey

“How in the heck can their entire network go down like that? Where’s the redundancy? I’m not a telecom expert but I’ll bet its a software bug gone wild. Whatever it is, I picture admins running around with their hair on fire!” — comment from mld321

“I work at a centre that also does support for rogers wireless, it’s balls to the walls busy right now. People are freaking out trying to get info on the outage and stuff.” — comment from LADY_and_SIR

With files from Financial Post staff