Canadian telephony provider struggling to restore full service

A Canadian telephony provider is still having problems restoring service two days after first reporting issues with its servers.

The website of Fongo, based in Waterloo, Ont., was “down for maintenance” as of 2 p.m. Eastern today, and many services listed on its status page were described as having a “major outage.”

These included its mobile app (which runs on top of any data or WiFi service), messaging services, account services, online store purchases, and web services such as www.fongoworks.com and www.freephoneline.ca. Fongo Works is a free business phone service.

In an email, the company said Fongo Works Desk Phones should be online by 9 a.m Eastern on Saturday, Apr. 29.

The customer support system was listed as having degraded performance.

“Since we don’t have back-end access to our systems we cannot make changes to customer services accounts,” the status page says. “Replies to support requests will be minimal due to volume of users contacting us about the outage.”

Internet services including Freephoneline, Superspeed, and Bundle DSL internet products are operational. Fongo Wireless LTE Data connectivity service is working, although the user portal is not accessible.

IT World Canada has left a phone message on the support line asking the company’s management for comment. No reply had been received by 2 p.m. Eastern.

Fongo offers a mixture of paid and free phone and internet services.

Problems began on Wednesday around 6 a.m. Eastern. At that time, the status page said, “We are having some issues with some of our servers. We are working hard to restore the service as soon as possible.”

Just before 2 p.m. Eastern the same day, the status page said Fongo Internet service was up and running.

Around 5:30 p.m. it reported, “Fongo Wireless server is working. Management portal is still under maintenance. We keep working to have all services up as fast as we can.”

Thursday morning, the status page said, “Fongo Home Phone and Free Phone Line services are partially UP. We continue to work hard to restore all services.”

This morning the status page reported Fongo Home Phone services are back online. “Fongo Works Pro Devices will be slowly coming online over 24 hours (starting 11am, Apr. 28).”