Businesses, hospitals, and cottagers impacted by Rogers outage

Rogers outage hits Simcoe County Businesses, hospitals and some municipal services were all impacted by a widespread outage of Rogers services.

The Rogers outage is more than just a nuisance for Jay Jagodics, the Barrie man said he would be impacted financially.

"I'm going to lose a day's pay over this," he told CTV News during a call from his Bell phone while at work Friday morning.

"My whole family uses Rogers. We have no internet or phones," Jagodics said.

The service outage is impacting users across Canada, affecting phone calls, internet usage and debit payments.

Local coffee shops were forced to turn customers without cash away during the morning rush in Barrie.

Diego Cabrera, a barista at Casa Cappuccino in downtown Barrie, said their bottom line took a hit because of the outage.

"We're actually seeing a huge drop in people coming in. Normally, around this time, we'd be making three to four hundred dollars, but currently, we're sitting at around $100. It's very depressing, to say the least."

Cottagers through Barrie on their way north have to contend with more than just the traffic since most pumps can take cash only with debit down.

"Well, it was just a long line because people are a little bit confused about how to pay. The signage wasn't very clear," said one motorist.

Barrie Police Services confirms the outage didn't impact its 911 call centre but noted some Rogers users might have trouble connecting.

"If the call connects, please stay on the call as long as possible," police stated, adding, "If you can't connect, please call back."

The system outage also affected some City of Barrie services, including payment options at all city-operated facilities.

Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) enacted a Code Grey or infrastructure failure alert in response to the Rogers network outage.

While most phones function normally, the Barrie hospital switched to a backup system for internal services; however, both the Sperling clinic and IOOF unit are on downtime procedures.

In a released statement, RVH said it is working with hospital partners and patients who may be experiencing some delays. Most appointments and procedures are going ahead as planned.

The Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit closed its immunization and oral health clinics scheduled for Friday in Collingwood and Barrie because of the service outage.

Health unit offices and phone lines remain operational.

Rogers has yet to provide a timeline for when the issue will be resolved, but did post an apology on social media.

Rogers said late Friday that its services were starting to come back online.

With files from CTV's Christian D'Avino