Canada has a highly concentrated telecom market — Rogers, Bell, and Telus together serve the vast majority of Canadian internet and mobile users. When any of the Big Three experiences an outage, it can affect millions of Canadians simultaneously. The most significant Canadian internet outage in recent history was the Rogers network failure in July 2022, which knocked out internet and mobile for over 12 million customers for nearly 19 hours.
How to check if a site is down in Canada
Go to WebsiteDown, enter the domain you are trying to reach, and click Check Status. The check runs from our infrastructure independently of your ISP. If the site loads in our check but not for you, the issue is with your ISP or local network. If our check also fails, the site itself is down. This distinction matters enormously in Canada where ISP-level outages are relatively common.
The Rogers 2022 outage — why Canadian internet is vulnerable
The July 2022 Rogers outage revealed a structural vulnerability in Canada's internet infrastructure. Because Rogers owns both consumer internet and business connectivity (including payment terminals and 911 infrastructure), a single misconfiguration caused cascading failures across healthcare, banking, retail, and emergency services simultaneously. The CRTC subsequently mandated network resilience improvements across Canadian carriers.
Most checked Canadian services
Canadians most frequently check: Rogers (rogers.com), Bell (bell.ca), Telus (telus.com), Netflix, YouTube, Shopify (a Canadian company — shopify.com), CBC (cbc.ca), and major Canadian banks including RBC, TD, Scotiabank, and BMO. Shopify outages are particularly notable because they affect hundreds of thousands of online stores globally, not just in Canada.
Is it Rogers, Bell, Telus, or the website itself?
If multiple unrelated sites fail simultaneously, suspect your ISP. Switch to your phone's cellular data and test the same sites — if they load on mobile, your home ISP has an issue. If they fail on mobile too, the sites themselves are down. During the Rogers 2022 outage, even emergency 911 services were affected, making the cellular vs. home internet distinction critical for public safety.