sbrook
Premium,Mod
join:2001-12-14
H0H 0H0 | reply to sbrook
Re: Bandwidth Alllocation
At the time many of us bought the modem, it was $5 per month, and mine has long since paid for itself. |
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z0z0
join:2008-02-29
m7a7a7
| reply to Mindcrime
if the decrease the bitcap that is in fact a price increase as previously stated and potentially quite a large one.
Does Rogers need government approval to do this or can they do whatever they want?
If anyone is interested, I received a call from a headhunter working for Rogers - they are looking for a Director of Pricing (for Cable TV and Internet).
Maybe we need someone from here get that job |
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gurn
@rogers.com
| reply to Mindcrime
I know this is going to sound weird but i welcome them charging for usage. I am also pleased each time i see someone saying they will leave if they are charged for the "overages" they blantanly are using.
Rogers has tried to throttle abusive users they have imposed these caps long long ago and did not charge customers. So yes face it people rogers is going to charge you for going over your perspective tiers cap.
So yay, complain/leave whatever when they start charging people are going to back off and they can stop throttling because well they wont need to.
Been with rogers for about 10 years now, I have seen changes that i hated for example when they promised extreme would not be throttled if you upgraded or you wouldn't get those mail outs they used to send out about high usage threatening shutting you down.
teksavy's going to have to start doing the same when they get rogers fall out customers too. just look at what happened to bell.
For those saying your now limited to some lower % of what you were promised. No your not. your charged if you go over. Rogers has tried every other way to get its service up to whats promised in several areas i know because I've personally lived through them. When they improve lines and give you higher speeds you just take that much of a bigger bite. This puts rogers back in the exact same spot. Btw thus far results from throttling have been a speed increase launching late march that they aren't increasing prices. I cant wait to see the results of this usage increase. (no need to throttle?)
This change i welcome. its the most fair way to do it. You want more then cap? pay for it. |
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sbrook
Premium,Mod
join:2001-12-14
H0H 0H0
 ·Rogers Hi-Speed
Host:
Rogers
Bell Canada
| gurn, are you really intending to troll with your post?
First things first ...
Rogers has never defined what their concept of residential internet should be to their customers. At the same time, the nature of residential internet has changed dramatically from the time the concepts of broadband residential internet were first laid down.
Let's face it, nobody believed when residential internet was introduced that people would need speeds above 14.4 Kbaud or that they'd be renting 2nd phone lines to connect to the internet for 16+ hours per day or that they'd be moving music, pictures etc around. It was believed it would be a largely character with limited graphic capability (like teletext - UK Ceefax/Oracle services).
That bubble was sure burst in a hurry.
Soon we were up to 56Kbaud modems and the ISPs were complaining about "unlimited" use being unlimited "access" and not unlimited time connected. Pictures, software, music and heavier graphics started to appear. HTML pages became more complex. Soon ISPs were reeling under the pressure that information providers were able to offer to consumers and consumers were eager to use.
But that wasn't enough. The telco researchers developed DSL and the cable researchers developed HFC networks, offering typically up to 3Mbps. Again, IPs were able to offer consumers even more complex web pages, flash, java, movies, music, streaming video and audio ... all bandwidth hungry, all demanding speed. Again the ISPs were reeling to catch up. For Cable in particular, the early years were with equipment that was NOT good at ensuring that everyone got a relatively reasonable share of the pie. So, on some cable segments, some people would go like grease lightning, and others would crawl ... and hence the telco sales pitch of "never shared".
The worst part at this phase was the very things that resulted in congestion were the things that the broadband ISPs were advertising as being the most wonderful thing since sliced bread that you could use broadband for.
Then the techies developed P2P ... share your music, your files etc. And OOOPS ... the broadband ISPs embraced the idea of sharing in their advertising and doing so without LIMITS!
So, users started using these still heavier use applications with the ISPs enticement, and demanded faster speeds which the ISPs delivered with better technology, but still playing catch up.
Then the ISPs discovered what this was causing them grief ... it was costing them way too much money in transit bandwidth, so they sought to limit the transit bandwidth by playing with byte caps. But with byte caps came defections to other ISPs, and the precious market share and market penetration was significantly hurting the ability to fund upgrades to areas that were poorly designed and old causing users poor performance.
Then the ISPs discovered that file sharing was WAY too popular, causing not just excessive transit bandwidth costs, but was choking their internal networks (particularly for cable because of limitations on the upstream). So they introduce P2P throttling to try to control it. But throttling has this habit of not just limiting speeds, but almost choking them to death!
But what do the ISPs do in all this ? They entice more people to jump on board with higher speeds still for normal use, keep advertising file sharing, keep advertising all those high bandwidth things, and what do the IPs do? Increase the availability of even higher bandwidth material with things like YouTube and iTunes etc.
Sure, there are people out there who seem to go well above and beyond who could be labelled abusers, but the ISPs have themselves to blame for saying Unlimited or imposing caps without enforcement, and worse not indicating how they actually expect a residential internet connection to be used. The terms of service today for most broadband ISPs have terms that can deal with abusers by denying service. ISPs tried to enforce those occasionally but rarely and inconsistently and then gave up.
If ISPs are going to class people as abusers, then they must define what is abuse, let their customer base know, and deal with abuse accordingly ... consistently.
Then there are heavy users ... in general heavy users usage balances out with light users usage. If it doesn't then the ISP has capacity and pricing issues that need to be dealt with. The ISP has through their own marketing created heavy users. You can't blame the heavy user.
It would be like creating a highway that is safe enough for cars to do say 150 KPH then advertising that there is no speed limit, expecting them to realize that the road's really only good enough for speeds up to 150 and getting upset that people are going 175, so they impose limit of 80 kph but they only patrol the highway once every 2 months when the wind blows out of the east and the moon is visible at 8 am, and oh, all you get's a warning. Is that going to stop people doing 175? Of course not.
The bottom line is that the ISPs created this mess and instead of trying to be creative and find reasonable ways out of the mess, they're only looking at the standard tools ... When all you put in your toolbox is a hammer, every screw looks like a nail!
Blame the customer and make him pay by enforcing that 80kph limit and charging to go over, and pay more for the overall service, whilst at the same time trying to sucker him into believing it's OK because he was given another speed increase.
This is a bad business model. |
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gurn
@rogers.com
| reply to Mindcrime
I am sorry if my post came off as a troll sbrook, i was just trying to express my hope that this latest move of rogers might have some hope. Sbrook your wealth of information has always impressed me you are very well informed and i usually go out of my way to read your posts on this rogers forum and the bell forum you sometimes frequent.
just a few comments on what you've just posted. I agree with it all. I do remember rogers advertising unlimited they probably still do. I agree rogers and other ISPs got themselves into this mess and now they are planing to punish customers for following advertisements.
The thing is here we are, imho rogers has tried other methods, have they not spent enough on upgrades? have they stuffed a lot of profits into pockets or invested in other things like portable internet. I dunno sbrook. Its just my feeling that this change might be a good one, and I'm saying that knowing I'm about 50g over my extreme bandwidth limits regularly in the last 6 or so months. I've started to change the way i use torrent like limiting my uploads maybe not downloading things like a full tv series that i can watch or pvr with my other rogers equipment. basically I'm trying to adjust myself not to use rogers bandwidth carelessly like leaving a bit-torrent open all night uploading.
I believe what your indicating by the comment on my post is that its my right to download/upload as i please as originally rogers advertised to me. Maybe I'm mistaken, maybe this will be a terrible thing for rogers in that a lot of customers leave or new customers go to other providers, or even better they are forced to invest more in what they provide.
Anyways my apologies if i came of as trolling, I've rarely posted over the last 3 or so years i've been monitoring this forum. hate to think i'd be seen as trolling. |
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sbrook
Premium,Mod
join:2001-12-14
H0H 0H0
·Rogers Hi-Speed
Host:
Rogers
Bell Canada
| I'm not saying it's your right to download / upload as you please. Rogers has every right to manage their network. BUT at the same time, it's time to come clean. Communicate with their customers in an open and straight forward manner about what how they expect users to use their service and not contradict this with marketing and advertising.
They need to distinguish what they consider abusive and act on it. My picture would be probably above 200GB per month and/or clogging the upstream with more than a few upstream connections at a time all operating wide open. (i.e. you can't seen 100 people at once!)
Having got rid of abusive level users then they can work out what heavy use constitutes and see if that is offsetable by light use and produce acceptable packages. IF they can't then it's time to introduce usage levels within the speed tiers and not rip them off with ridiculous per GB charges. Or allow users to buy excess bandwidth in packages up front where it's way cheaper.
There are lots of ways to balance this stuff out ... it just needs some creativity rather than the OSFA hammer approach. |
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Goldielover
@rogers.com
| reply to Mindcrime
Gurn, I think many of us would not be complaining too hard about the implementation of overage fees if Rogers had not decreased the caps at the same time. I think most of us understand that they have always had the right to charge them, but have chosen not to until now. I manage our household internet use so as to ensure we stay well within our existing cap of 60Gb. I keep an eye on our usage on the Rogers site, and both computers have Netstat Live installed on them so I can keep an eye on each individual computer's usage as well. We average somewhere around 18 - 20Gb per month. Hardly an abusive user. However, if Rogers does reduce my bandwidth to only 2Gb per month, at the same time as introducing overage fees, then it is very difficult to see this as anything other than a cash grab. There is no point in having broadband if there is a 2Gb cap. I can do better than that with my old dial up provider. I haven't yet cancelled them, as the recently retired oldest computer needed it, and, if DSL proves not to be an option in my area, then I will be back to the 56K modem. Unlimited dial up access for $10.00 U.S. per month. Sounds a little better than 2Gb for $24.95, even if a bit slower. Finances dictate against paying for an upgrade to a higher tier with Rogers as I am an unemployed single parent. |
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gurn
@rogers.com
| reply to Mindcrime
This could also backfire. they are about to tell customers "hey john smith you've only used 2gigs when you could have used 60gigs, oh and btw we'll charge you if you go over that" now john smith who's never used more then 2gigs a month starts using more to get value out of what he's been paying for. Now rogers users that weren't using the network start adding on. then rogers is ever worse off. (i hope this does not happen) There will be no coming back from that.
Coming clean would be nice, giving a bit more back would be nice too. I'm trying to think of a time rogers came clean as a company when it screwed over or lied, only real thing i can think of is the system access fee, but that was forced by a lawsuit i believe. Has anyone noticed that when they mention this fee in flyers they write in bold "THIS IS NOT A GOVERNMENT FEE" |
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gurn
@rogers.com
| reply to Mindcrime
I dont agree with the 2g rate on ultra lite. I'm somewhat lacking in knowledge of how much one could really achieve with 256Kbs download speed a month. I didn't realize you could even get as high as 60gig or even use multiple computers affectively at those speeds. from my understanding if your ultra lite price is 21.95 then your cap is 60gig. if you signed up after jan 14th 2008 its only 2gig.
i strongly agree the limit should be 60gig at least in those lower tiers.
these numbers i would consider fair
60gig ultra lite
80gig lite
100gig express
200gig extreme
unfortunatly rogers picked other numbers. They must have researched what users are using on average at those tiers to come up with those numbers. you'd think anyways. also interesting that they came up with a $25 dollar amount. exactly the same price bell is charging. |
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sbrook
Premium,Mod
join:2001-12-14
H0H 0H0
·Rogers Hi-Speed
Host:
Rogers
Bell Canada
| reply to gurn
They were taken to court for negative optioning ... i.e. having to reject a new service instead of opting for it and being charged.
They lied about throttling.
They lied about cutting speeds from 3Mbps to 1.5Mbps
They declared they were getting rid of newsgroups primarly to help eliminate child porn. This was really only spin control.
They outsourced mail to Yahoo! exposing their users to Yahoo!'s marketing policies and privacy policy and also exposing Canadians to potential investigations under the US Patriot act
Fees up 3 times in a little over a year.
The business with caps is just an ongoing comedy ... They decided to implement them several years ago and the RBUA could not persuade them not to. Bell in the meantime, introduced caps, and Rogers not yet having implemented them got a FLOOD of users from Bell. Bell relinquished their caps and started with the never shared ads ... and slowly got customers back from Rogers. This time, it seems Rogers and Bell are trying to co-ordinate their caps implementation.
The measurement tool has been one reason for the major delay in cap implementation. It has been so terribly inaccurate, accumulating GBs of data for people who had their modem off and away on vacation. Conversely people using GBs of data not accumulating any!
Bottom line is that after incident after incident one find that it's hard to trust Rogers. |
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sbrook
Premium,Mod
join:2001-12-14
H0H 0H0
1 edit | reply to gurn
What you consider fair is irrelevant to Rogers. Heck, what hundreds considered fair in a petition to Rogers was considered irrelevant! |
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Goldielover
@rogers.com
| reply to Mindcrime
Yes, you can effectively use two computers on Ultra Lite - I have two right now, and, for a month, had a third on my network as well. Not saying three connected would be able to do any heavy duty downloading, but general surfing is no problem. I think it would be pretty difficult to hit the 60Gb limit on Ultra Lite, but not impossible. Ours see a fair bit of use, but I think the highest I've gone is just over 21Gb. That was for a single computer, though. We've got two on right now, and could conceivably go above that. If they do leave my cap at 60Gb then I'll calm down again, as I feel it is fair that I get left with what I signed up for. I have no real problem with small price hikes from time to time, but I certainly do have a problem if my bandwidth is reduced by 97%. If they do, then I'm out of there. Kalnick mentioned a Rogers CSR trying the tactic it was for our own protection due to possible wireless abuse. What a load of crock that was. If someone is careless enough not to bother with setting up any sort of security on one's wireless router, then all I can say is that they probably shouldn't be using it in the first place. Mine has been secured, and I also keep an eye on the attached devices, just to make sure nothing manages to get on that shouldn't be there. |
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Goldielover
join:2008-02-29
Toronto, ON
| reply to Mindcrime
I've finally got an answer out of Rogers customer service. Not good. Not good AT ALL. Unless the CSR is wrong, it looks like they will be decreasing all existing customers as well as new ones.
Here's a copy of the relevant portion of the e-mail"
"...Thank you for taking the time to write to us, we appreciate your use of
online customer service.
In your recent email, you have informed us that you would like to
confirm that your monthly bandwidth is 60GB.
Your monthly bandwidth is 60GB up until March 18, 2008 at which time it
will decrease to 2GB per month...."
I am NOT a happy camper right now, as I've got to think of what I plan to do here. |
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sbrook
Premium,Mod
join:2001-12-14
H0H 0H0
1 edit | Rogers web site now shows the limit for UL as 2GB per month ... don't know when it changed. |
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Goldielover
join:2008-02-29
Toronto, ON
| Its been showing that for quite a while - but there was talk that existing custemers prior to Jan. 14 would be left alone. Obviously not the case. I have today lodged a formal complaint with the CCTS, partly with regards to a 97% reduction in service being grossly unfair, but also with regards to the fact that as I have six months remaining on my contract with them, I will have to pay cancellation charges to get out of it, or pay the excess bandwidth charges until the end of August. |
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Goldielover
join:2008-02-29
Toronto, ON
| reply to Mindcrime
Rogers has done a flip flop. After I received the earlier e-mail this afternoon from them stating that my Ultra Lite service would be decreased to 2Gb on March 18, I wrote them back stating that I was not at all happy with the 97% decrease, and had submitted a complaint to the CCTS. Just moments ago, I received the following:
"In your recent email, you have informed us that you are not happy with
the recent change in our monthly bandwidth for our Ultra Lite service.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you, and we
appreciate your patience while waiting to have this matter resolved.
New customers will have a 2GB bandwidth cap on their service however
existing Ultra Lite customers will continue to receive the 60 GB monthly
bandwidth. However if at some point in time you decide to upgrade to
another tier of internet and then go back to Ultra Lite you would no
longer receive the grandfathered bandwidth cap of 60GB. Please also
note that if you go over the 60 GB you will be charged $10 per GB."
Now - was that the complaint that caused them to reverse their position, or was it just another case of a CSR not fully knowing what Rogers is doing with the changes?
Also, if they do keep an eye on this forum and their own support forum, they are probably well aware I had posted their earlier e-mail in both, and are hoping I will post the latest as well for damage control purposes. |
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anon456789
@rogers.com | It was a misinformed CSR. |
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Stewy
Premium
join:2007-12-12
Kitchener, ON
1 edit | reply to sbrook
said by sbrook  :Rogers has every right to manage their network. BUT at the same time, it's time to come clean. Communicate with their customers in an open and straight forward manner about what how they expect users to use their service and not contradict this with marketing and advertising. very well said. Whoever they have running their Office of Policy Confusion is a sheer genius.
said by gurn :
but i welcome them charging for usage.... You want more then cap? pay for it.
Hey I'd gladly pay for it if it was a fair price. I'm not even asking for a fair price. Just come clean tell us what it is and let the market forces shape the market.
Do I pay for overages I don't know, Is my bandwidth going to be cut I don't know, one day it's at 75Gig today it's at 100Gig. Will I be grandfathered I don't know. What am I exactly paying for my services I don't know.
Can you imagine if Rogers used the same business model to run Ontario Hydro or the Utilities department or Fire and Police. There would be total anarchy.
There are two things that get my blood boiling one is Hydro and the other is Bandwidth.
Kitchener Hydro last year because we had a warm winter said in an article that because energy consumption was low they were going to need to generate more money.
That EXPLAINS everything. |
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GroovyPhoenx
join:2006-05-22
Gloucester, ON
·Rogers Hi-Speed
| reply to sbrook
said by sbrook :They need to distinguish what they consider abusive and act on it. My picture would be probably above 200GB per month and/or clogging the upstream with more than a few upstream connections at a time all operating wide open. (i.e. you can't seen 100 people at once!) Agreed, but who defines abusive and heavy and etc? The same people who are right now botching the model? I do recall the "Sharing your connection" commercials, its still subtly mentioned in some bell adds of course. The problem is that Rogers sees a way of making money and could care less about its customers, Its been proven time and again. Newsgroups a problem? Gone! Never mind they don't even offer a solution or alternative. Newsgroups is something I enjoyed as part of the internet experience. But now, Youtube, DivX6... All of these heavy usage on bandwitdh sites, they all suck up the bandwidth, is the user to blame for wanting to make use of his/her connection? I don't think so. I do think howver Rogers needs to get with the time, Internet shouldn't be getting more expensive it should actually in time be getting less expensive IMHO, with competition.
said by sbrook :Having got rid of abusive level users then they can work out what heavy use constitutes and see if that is offsetable by light use and produce acceptable packages. IF they can't then it's time to introduce usage levels within the speed tiers and not rip them off with ridiculous per GB charges. Or allow users to buy excess bandwidth in packages up front where it's way cheaper. There are lots of ways to balance this stuff out ... it just needs some creativity rather than the OSFA hammer approach. They will never get rid of abusive levels IMHO they will wind up redefining the abusive level until they get themselves out of existance. That my take on it anyway. Get rid of more clients means less need for techs less need for install companies etc etc. |
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sbrook
Premium,Mod
join:2001-12-14
H0H 0H0
·Rogers Hi-Speed
Host:
Rogers
Bell Canada
| Of course they define what's abusive. It's their network after all! Part of defining what is abuse is all about implementing a model ... that means the people who are botching the model need to get an eye opener.
This business of moving the goal every time we turn around and worse, taking the net off the ice just when we think it's time, makes it impossible for the customers and just causes at best annoyance and at worst outright anger ... but most importantly it loses customer goodwill.
I received a Rogers survey yesterday and it asked if I won something in a recent "game" initiated by Rogers. It was quite a pathetic thing ... the "prize" was a couple free movies from Rogers Video ... I'm not trekking 20 km round trip to collect a free movie and 20 km a few days later to take it back! Some prize! These folks are SO out of touch with their customers. Give me the option of a prize I can use ... like $10 off my bill for a month. Those are the kind of "customer loyalty" things that we should be seeing, not enticing us to spend more which is what all their normal enticements are. |
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