London residents woke up to dead internet connections this past November, with Start.ca customers across Ontario experiencing a widespread outage that left thousands without service for hours. The disruption, which began early in the morning around 5 AM, affected customers throughout the province who rely on the London-based internet provider.
The culprit behind the chaos? Vandals who cut fibre optic cables while apparently searching for copper to steal. According to customer support representatives, the vandalism targeted the critical fibre connection between Start.ca’s network and Rogers, creating a domino effect that knocked out service for countless users.
What made the situation particularly frustrating for customers was the lack of immediate communication. Start.ca didn’t post any updates on their website until around 9 AM, leaving subscribers in the dark about what was happening. Many customers found themselves stuck in lengthy chat queues, with some reporting being position 95 or higher when trying to reach support.
The outage highlighted a major shift in Start.ca’s operations since their acquisition by Telus. Longtime customers noticed that the company’s once-celebrated 24/7 customer service had been quietly scaled back, leaving people without support during off-hours. This change was particularly problematic for those running businesses from home who depend on reliable internet connectivity.
Local residents took to online forums to share their experiences and seek information about the outage. Many expressed frustration not just with the service interruption, but with what they perceived as a decline in the company’s customer service standards since the Telus buyout.
The incident affected different Start.ca customers in varying ways. Those with Start.ca’s fibre service remained online throughout the outage, as that infrastructure runs independently of Rogers’ network. However, customers using the company’s cable internet service, which relies on Rogers’ infrastructure, found themselves completely cut off from the digital world.
Customer support eventually provided updates indicating that repairs were expected to be completed by 7 PM that evening. The vandalism incident wasn’t isolated to affecting just Start.ca – other third-party internet providers that use Rogers’ network infrastructure also experienced disruptions.
For many London residents, this outage served as a wake-up call about their internet provider choice. Some customers who had been loyal to Start.ca for years began questioning whether the company still offered the superior customer service that originally attracted them to the brand.
The incident also exposed infrastructure vulnerabilities in Ontario’s internet system. A single fibre cut caused by vandals was able to disrupt service for thousands of customers across multiple cities, raising questions about redundancy and backup systems.
Local discussions revealed that Start.ca had undergone significant changes following the Telus acquisition in February 2023. Company founder Peter Rocca left not long after the buyout, and the company reportedly conducted mass layoffs of customer service representatives in September, even affecting some upper management positions.
Many customers noted that the company had also outsourced their in-house fibre installation team to third-party contractors, marking another departure from their previous operational model. These changes contributed to growing concerns among subscribers about the direction of the company they once enthusiastically recommended to friends and family.
The outage affected residents across London’s various neighbourhoods, from downtown core areas to suburban communities. Some customers reported that their internet service had become increasingly unreliable even before this major outage, with connections dropping multiple times per week in certain areas.
For those affected, the incident served as a reminder of how dependent modern life has become on internet connectivity. From remote work to streaming entertainment, the outage disrupted daily routines and highlighted the importance of reliable internet infrastructure in today’s digital age.
The vandalism incident was eventually resolved later that evening, with most customers seeing their service restored by the estimated 7 PM timeframe. However, the experience left many Start.ca subscribers reconsidering their internet provider options and questioning whether the company’s golden days of exceptional customer service were truly behind them.
Several affected customers mentioned the incident in local online discussions, sharing their frustrations and experiences with the outage.