The first report of this today on the XDA-Developers Forum Rogers Mandatory Update thread clearly states that this redirect is, in a spectacle of comic irony, preventing 911 calls as well. As ben.selinger put it [minor punctuation fixes]:

Rogers is rescanning phones again and blacklisting non-1.5 phones. The voice services are then being diverted to Rogers support. Better, they’re diverting 911 calls! When I realized they’d diverted my first call, I promptly hung up and called 911 to see if it would also be diverted. It was.

Later in the thread, and similarly on Twitter, @RogersMary states:

Hi This is Mary with Rogers online communication team. To clarify, this is not so. Safety is always our primary concern and while customers are being directed to Care to ensure they are aware of the bug fix, this in no way impacts their ability to call 911 direct.

Perhaps it hasn’t been completely tested, or if 911 was being redirected it’ll be solved shortly, but I for one am willing believe ben.selinger. I don’t see any real reason why someone would lie about that. Additional confirmation would be useful though. If anyone has encountered this redirect on a call they’ve had to place to 911, please post here.

Fortunately, still running CyanogenMod 1.4.13 with bcrook’s netfix3-dream after having had Rogers perform a “network refresh” back when they were allowing us to, my data still works and I have not had calls redirected. I still, however, get the phone calls and text messages at least once every day telling me to “upgrade”.

This latest move on Rogers’ part is just nonsensical. It’s bad enough that we’ve had our data plans disabled, but now to not even be able to make outbound phone calls? Ridiculous. Yes, we get it Rogers, you take 911 seriously and don’t want to be blamed for a failure to act on your part (in spite of being 4 months late to act), but pissing off your customers is not the way to do it. The fact is that those of us who refuse to downgrade to Rogers/HTC’s 1.5 firmware from our up-to-date, fully functional, and 911-friendly 1.6 and up firmwares are being punished by Rogers for not complying in the campaign to make them look good in the face of 4 months of neglect.

I’m not on board, Rogers.

Update: Some links to other mentions and discussions of the issue:

• Howard Forums
• Blistov’s Tech Review: Rogers disconnects data services to G1 users! Rogers tech support swamped with angry calls !