The IT Nerd

July 1^st marks the 40^th anniversary of Canada’s first wireless call. It happened at Nathan Phillips Square in downtown Toronto. Art Eggleton, Toronto’s mayor at the time, called Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau with a 10-pound mobile phone. Company founder Ted Rogers made the first call happen by investing in wireless at a time when no one else believed in it.

In July 1985, mobile networks handled 100 calls per day. Today, Canadians make 100 million calls and use 6.5 billion megabytes of data on Rogers wireless network every day.

To celebrate the 40^th anniversary of Canada’s first wireless call, Rogers produced a video celebrating this milestone.

2025 marks Rogers 65th anniversary in Canada. Ted Rogers founded the company in 1960 with the purchase of the radio station CHFI in Toronto.

As I am typing this, I am getting flashbacks to the major Rogers outage from a few years ago because Rogers has some sort of outage that is ongoing based on this from Down Detector:

Browsing the Rogers sub Reddit shows users who have been affected by this outage. Not everywhere is affected, but a lot of people are affected. Rogers hasn’t commented on this outage, but they need to as this is clearly widespread.

More info as it comes.

UPDATE: This appears to be fixed or on the way to being fixed based on comments that I am seeing on the Rogers sub Reddit. I haven’t found an explanation from Rogers as to why and what happened. But they need to say something as given their past problems, Canadians will be none too happy with them.

On June 30th, Rogers will shut down their 3G network. And if you still have a 3G device connected to Rogers, you will pay big. As in a one-time $75 fee on top of an existing $3 monthly charge.

Ouch.

This is detailed in this document put out by Rogers. Here’s the relevant text:

This document also says the following:

• Rogers customers can avoid these charges by upgrading their phone or SIM card, or updating settings to enable VoLTE if supported.
• Those who don’t transition by November 2, 2025, risk losing their number, plan, and stored voicemails permanently.

Now many people who are reading this are wondering who would still have a 3G device. The answer is seniors and those on fixed or low incomes. I’ve personally have come across several seniors who have either ignored or have been unaware of this because their existing phones still work. Thus I’ve not only needed to explain to them what this means, but in some cases help them to transition to phones that support 4G. Such as this one because an iPhone or a Android phone might be too much of a jump for them. Thus I encourage you to reach out to your friends, parents, grandparents, etc. who might have a 3G phone and help them to make the jump to 4G and a more modern phone if required before they get dinged for not getting off a network that is going away soon.

Rogers Xfinity TV offers the most content of any television provider in Canada with the addition of more than 150 international channels in over 20 languages. Now Rogers customers can access more than 480 channels and experience more of the world from home, only on Rogers Xfinity TV.

According to a recent survey of Canadians who speak multiple languages, in-language content is important to 84% to stay connected to their culture and heritage.

Rogers newly expanded international TV channel offering is available with Rogers Xfinity TV packages in Free Preview through June 17 for customers to explore the world from the comfort of their home. When the preview is over, customers can customize their entertainment experience by subscribing to these international TV channels and theme packs.

Rogers Xfinity TV brings the most TV content – live sports, entertainment and news from Canada and around the world – with on-demand and streaming apps together on one platform to deliver the best entertainment experience.

To learn more, visit rogers.com/Xfinityy.

Rogers Communications announced today that it has been ranked the most reliable 5G wireless network in Canada by umlaut, solidifying the company’s longstanding leadership in network reliability. 

The study shows Rogers wireless customers enjoy the best network performance in the country, winning umlaut’s “Best in Test” wireless benchmark award for the seventh consecutive year, as well as top performance in voice, data and reliability for wireless networks. Rogers has led on umlaut’s reliability testing since it was first introduced in 2021.

Umlaut, a global leader in independent benchmarking, measures network performance on smartphones based on extensive drive tests throughout Canada and crowdsourced data. The independent benchmarking organization tests over 200 mobile networks in over 120 countries. 

Rogers has invested over $40 billion in its networks over the last decade and will invest $4 billion in capital investments this year. Rogers is committed to bringing Canadians the biggest and best wireless networks. The company continues to invest to expand the country’s largest and most reliable 5G network, which now reaches more than 2,500 communities. 

As the first round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs heats up, Rogers announced today a preview of Rogers Xfinity Multiview, a new service that gives Canadian hockey fans the chance to watch two games at once – all on the same screen.

Rogers Xfinity Multiview will launch on select nights throughout the first round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs starting Monday, April 21 at 9:30 p.m. ET. Customers just need to say “Multiview” into their award-winning voice remote to enjoy side-by-side coverage, with the ability to switch audio and add captions.

These exclusive events are a free preview of the new Rogers Xfinity Multiview experience, starting with this year’s 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Rogers plans to continue building on its Rogers Xfinity Multiview experience, including the ability to watch up to four live events at the same time, increasing the number of sports, and the ability for customers to build their own Multiview experience.

Starting tonight, customers can experience these matchups using Rogers Xfinity Multiview:

• April 21: Colorado at Dallas (9:30 p.m. ET) and Edmonton at Los Angeles (10 p.m. ET)
• April 22: New Jersey at Carolina (6 p.m. ET) and Ottawa at Toronto (7:30 p.m. ET), Florida at Tampa Bay (8:30 p.m. ET) and Minnesota at Vegas (11 p.m. ET)
• April 23: Dallas at Colorado (9:30 p.m. ET) and Edmonton at Los Angeles (10 p.m. ET)
• April 24: Florida at Tampa Bay (6:30 p.m. ET) and Toronto at Ottawa (7 p.m. ET), Vegas at Minnesota (9 p.m. ET) and Winnipeg at St. Louis (9:30 p.m. ET)
• April 25: Washington at Montreal (7 p.m. ET) and Carolina at New Jersey (8 p.m. ET)

Sportsnet is the place to catch all the 2025 Stanley Cup playoff action and Rogers Xfinity gives Canadians the best seat in the house. To learn more about Rogers Xfinity visit rogers.com/xfinity.

Rogers Communications announced today that it has been named the most reliable internet in Canada by Opensignal, the leading global provider of independent network experience insights and market performance. 

The Opensignal report shows that in Canada, Rogers wins for overall reliability experience, consistent quality and download speed. Last month, Rogers was also recognized as Canada’s most reliable wireless network.

Over the last 20 years, Rogers has invested nearly $70 billion in our networks and continues to invest to deliver enhanced reliability and multi-gig speeds to almost eight million homes this year. These investments in network infrastructure combined with the introduction of Rogers Xfinity late last year brings Canadians industry-leading internet technology on a world-class suite of products so they can game more, stream more and do more. 

To learn more about Rogers Xfinity visit Rogers.com.

Yesterday, I posted a story about Rogers laying off staff. Now to be clear, I found out about this earlier in the day, but I waited until I had confirmation that this was actually happening before posting anything. Now I have had additional facts about the sitaution via a source within the company who asked me not to identify them. Here’s what I have confirmed:

• Roughly 400 people were let go by Rogers.
• All the people who were let go worked in mostly the online chat support group. But some customer service people were also let go.
• Something that I have yet to confirm is that members of Rogers social media team have been let go. If you are a member of that team and would like to speak to me about this anonymously, please reach out to me to do so.

Seeing as these are customer facing cuts, it’s a safe bet that customers will be impacted. But this might not be the end of it because another source who didn’t want me to identify them has said that the results of these cuts are not going to be the only ones, and that there are more cuts coming. I’ll be watching this closely because if that’s true, it may not be a good thing for Rogers customers.

Bell has been catching a lot of heat over the last year or two because of mass layoffs of their staff. But it appears that Rogers is joining them on that front as I am seeing posts on Reddit which I have confirmed with people inside Rogers that there are layoffs underway. One thread has members of their online chat team being laid off. That in turn will force customers to call into Rogers. And that may not go well for customers based on what I have heard from their customers and Another thread goes further by saying that their online chat is shutting down. Still another thread indicates that members of voice tech support have been let go. Finally another thread lists the terms of severance.

Again, when I started to catch wind of this, I went to sources inside Rogers who confirmed that this is real. And I am working to get numbers on how big this layoff is. I’ll post that when I have something in terms of numbers that is accurate. But regardless of how big this is or isn’t, I can say one thing. If Bell got Canadians mad about their layoffs, Rogers is about to get the same reaction from Canadians. And I for one will be interested to see how they handle this.

Rogers Communications announced today that it has been awarded Canada’s most reliable wireless network by Opensignal, a global leader in independent network benchmarking.

Opensignal’s study shows that in Canada Rogers holds the top spot for reliability and quality in wireless networks. Rogers also won on 5G Upload Speed and 5G Video Experience, making Rogers the most awarded network by Opensignal. 

Rogers has invested over $40 billion in its networks over the last decade and will invest $4 billion in capital investments this year. Rogers is committed to bringing Canadians the biggest and best wireless networks. The company continues to invest to expand the country’s largest and most reliable 5G network, which now reaches more than 2,500 communities.