# Rogers is capping downloads now...



## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

so now i need to find a new isp i guess. rogers sent me a notice that they are charging $2/gb for anything above 60gb per month...


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## Thom (May 10, 2005)

In their notice to you they also indicated what YOUR typical monthly usage is. Do you usually move more than 60GB a month????

Got my notice today as well. I am well under the 60GB


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

i had 2 months under and 1 month over. but the point is they just want to nickel and dime you. they want as much as they can get.


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## ericlewis91 (Jul 12, 2007)

oh this isnt good

i usually download around 15-20 movies off apples rental store or movie store
and loads of music

(*usa itunes gift cards)

im likely to go over

crap

no email yet


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

i have a friend who suggested switching to primus... anyone have an opinion?


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## guytoronto (Jun 25, 2005)

I'll be switching to TekSavvy.

I use 100-150GB per month.

Hopefully once people start leaving Rogers, they'll realize how bad a move this is.


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## wcg (Oct 13, 2007)

Note that in Michael Geist's blog today it's now official that Bell is now throttling all encrypted traffic through its backbone including all ISPs that resell their bandwidth which I assumes includes TekSavvy.

That's what we get with no competition - two large companies who have a stranglehold on the market. Let's hope for some wireless network or something to compete.


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

taco taco burrito said:


> so now i need to find a new isp i guess. rogers sent me a notice that they are charging $2/gb for anything above 60gb per month...


This is news? I thought that was crystal clear when I signed up with Rogers High-Speed back in January...


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## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

Bell is throttling all the 3 party ISP's that rely on their infrastructure. Is Rogers doing the same thing? Are there any ISP's left in Canada that are not throttled/shaping their traffic.


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

bgw said:


> Bell is throttling all the 3 party ISP's that rely on their infrastructure. Is Rogers doing the same thing? Are there any ISP's left in Canada that are not throttled/shaping their traffic.


Rogers P2P/(torrents) is throttled. (And always has been for as long as I can remember.)


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

i think it might be different in different provinces... rogers in ontario never had a cap b4 now, actually technically beginning in june... throttling is a whole other thing too... but i just dont want to have to even think about how much im downloading or not...


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

taco taco burrito said:


> ...rogers in ontario never had a cap b4 now...


I was informed of my 60GB cap on sign up in January, and I live in Mississauga, Ontario.


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

well, i got this notice by mail today. i have used rogers for cable internet for years and years... ever since i switched from dialup back in the 90s... so ya, they are just trying to get us used to getting ripped off....


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

I don't exceed my 60GB cap per month, so it doesn't worry me personally, but I can understand why it would aggravate a number of many others. Seems like Rogers just took a few months to actually get out the notices for this "change" in policy, as I got the notice today as well, though this policy has been in effect on my account since activation.


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## Howard2k (Feb 9, 2005)

I'm typically under. But now I suspect that Rogers will see a flurry of activity towards the end of the month as people download to use up what remains of their quota.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

Guess that explains why Rogers is hesitant to get in bed with the iPhone.


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## jonmon (Feb 15, 2002)

just got the letter in the mail too. i'm under in the months that were shown, but i just don't like the idea of being limited. 

which provider are people switching too?


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

Seems like they ALL suck now. Bandwidth caps are a complete joke.


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## cap10subtext (Oct 13, 2005)

I'd be more upset if iTunes allowed me to DL anything more TV than Corner Gas... In all seriousness it really does astound me that customers who sign up for internet and cell phones for the long run are treated just like people who first sign up. Oh, except without the perks.


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## Adrian. (Nov 28, 2007)

Everyone should abandon the internet. Consumer strikes!


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

Adrian. said:


> Everyone should abandon the internet. Consumer strikes!


:lmao: That would be funny, and perhaps even cool... for a few days - and then widespread panic.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

The market will prevail. Remembering when shutting down Napster was supposed to curtail all illegal downloading? Didn't quite work out that way. They just have to find a way to increase bandwidth because customers will demand it.


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

jonmon said:


> just got the letter in the mail too. i'm under in the months that were shown, but i just don't like the idea of being limited.
> 
> which provider are people switching too?


i dont know what to switch too. ive never had dsl, only cable, so im concerned about that, but also the cap thing and the throttling thing... a friend of mine said to check out primus but i think i read that telus doesnt throttle but i dont know any details about any other places actually. also, i might just be able to swing something when i call rogers cancellation department... who knows. they usually try to swing something when you really try to bail out on them... but they are a big monster and it would be nice if there was someone to compete with them (and bell).

anyways, it would be good if anyone knows a good list or comparison of local isps. i need to give rogers 30 days notice to cancel this service, and the capping really starts in june according to what the notice said...


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

fjnmusic said:


> The market will prevail. Remembering when shutting down Napster was supposed to curtail all illegal downloading? Didn't quite work out that way. They just have to find a way to increase bandwidth because customers will demand it.


there is no good reason to assume any of the downloading is illegal. but i guess thats a whole other thread too...


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

Adrian. said:


> Everyone should abandon the internet. Consumer strikes!


haha i dont know what id do with myself... i wish i was one of those people that didint know how to "work a computer", and doesnt own a cell phone...


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## MACinist (Nov 17, 2003)

taco taco burrito said:


> haha i dont know what id do with myself... i wish i was one of those people that didint know how to "work a computer", and doesnt own a cell phone...


You could go old' school and read the paper, take a walk.. 

Not using the internet for 3 days wouldn't do anything as you are still paying your provider the monthly fee. If everyone quit their service at the same time, that would cause massive panic at the two camps.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

fjnmusic said:


> They just have to find a way to increase bandwidth because customers will demand it.


Not that easy. One either has to figure out a way to magically increase the bandwidth of the existing fiber links which Nortel apparently have done, but only by a factor of ten, or the carriers have to physically string more fiber and with Canada's distances, that ain't cheap.

There was a brief newscast on CBC last night about the net becoming overloaded - this goes way beyond Bell or some other local carrier.


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## Howard2k (Feb 9, 2005)

krs said:


> Not that easy. One either has to figure out a way to magically increase the bandwidth of the existing fiber links which Nortel apparently have done, but only by a factor of ten, or the carriers have to physically string more fiber and with Canada's distances, that ain't cheap.
> 
> There was a brief newscast on CBC last night about the net becoming overloaded - this goes way beyond Bell or some other local carrier.


Are you referring to DWDM? Nortel didn't come up with it and it's very well established and provides SIGNIFICANT scalability. . I don't believe that any of the major Canadian telcos are hurting for bandwidth at all, and I'm in a good position to make that statement. The challenge is the points where these carriers exchange data with each other. Sometimes this is done with contractual stipulations imposed on the actual bandwidth.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

ericlewis91 said:


> oh this isnt good
> 
> i usually download around 15-20 movies off apples rental store or movie store
> and loads of music
> ...


No you're not.

The average movie off Apple's rental store is around 1GB. You'd need to rent 60 per month (well, let's account for your other uses and say 50/month) to be worried, and even then it's $2/GB.

Sorry guys, but I think this cap is entirely reasonable, the overage charge is fair, and the alternative is higher monthly fees for EVERYBODY. I was expecting a lot worse.

60GB/month is PLENTY of "downloading" for anyone but the EXTREMELY greedy. If you really do need more, no problem! It's a reasonable amount for more ($20 for another 10GB), or perhaps what you really need is a business-class account.


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## guytoronto (Jun 25, 2005)

I've had Rogers Internet for almost 5 years. I doubt they'll appreciate me packing up and leaving.

Oh, and I'll be cancelling my cable service as well. If they can't provide my Internet, I don't want any of their services. Maybe I'll take the $200 hit on my cellular bill to get out of my contract and finally make the switch to Virgin.

Not a smart move Rogers.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

Howard2k said:


> Are you referring to DWDM?


I have no clue!

This was a recent - within the last month - news report.
DWDM has been around since about 1999/2000, so I doubt that's what was being referred to.

In any case - I assumed that the transport infrastructure is the problem throughout the net, that was certainly the suggestion in the CBC news report last night, but according to your information, obviously not.


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## irontree (Oct 28, 2006)

Strange... they've had a 60gb cap on my express account for as long as I can remember. Only news is now they are starting to charge $$$.
I was always under the impression that I've only had 60gb per month for a long time.


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

chas_m said:


> No you're not.
> 
> The average movie off Apple's rental store is around 1GB. You'd need to rent 60 per month (well, let's account for your other uses and say 50/month) to be worried, and even then it's $2/GB.
> 
> ...


sorry, who are you to decide how much is reasonable? rogers is just looking for excuses to charge more. it cost them nothing regardless of how much i use the internet or not... what they want is just a guarantee that they are gonna get $45 a month off of as many ppl as possible. they whole point for them is to get us all used to the idea of paying for a certain amount... so they can get $45 plus some more. 
Like i said before, the point isnt how much you use per month, the point is that something unlimited is now being limited. that is not what i signed up for.


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## guytoronto (Jun 25, 2005)

Agreed. 60GB is enough for Internet noobs. Hardcore users don't appreciate caps.

Even their "95GB Cap" on their highest plan isn't good enough.

I sent Rogers an email expressing my dissatisfaction with the new plan, and my intentions to cancel my service.


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

guytoronto said:


> Agreed. 60GB is enough for Internet noobs. Hardcore users don't appreciate caps.
> 
> Even their "95GB Cap" on their highest plan isn't good enough.
> 
> I sent Rogers an email expressing my dissatisfaction with the new plan, and my intentions to cancel my service.



a cap is a cap. i agree. i called rogers to let them know that id be ditching them. but i really need to set up a new service coming in first... i have no really good idea of who to switch too... thats important. i cant have my service interupted for too long...


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## Abysmal (Mar 14, 2005)

I had enough of Rogers a while ago.. I used to have the full package with them, cable ( full package channels + pvr ) plus cell phone plus internet ( extreme package ) .. 

Basically it came down the BS with dealing with them.. and their billing practices.. and the fact that I rely on my hi-speed connection to VPN into work, which means encrypted traffic, which means they change its QoS ( Quality of service ) so it's filtered and slower..

Last fall they didn't send me ( and a few other people I know ) a monthly bill... when I called them on it I got a letter saying it was their mistake and there wouldn't be any late fees because of it.. 2 days later I got a letter saying that my account was overdue (their mistake) and I would have to make arrangements to pay it or they would suspend my account.. 2 hours on the phone sealed the deal..

I called TekSavvy and had an account setup withing 3 days.. Got a adsl modem at canada computers for 17.99 and a backup 2 months later for 13.99 ( still in the box ).

I cancelled my Rogers Hi-speed account last August and have had the best service I have ever had since the internet started.. ( Hey old timers.. remember 9600 baud dial up cuz bbses just didn't cut it anymore! ).

My wife broke her rogers Cell phone 2 weeks ago and I got the same old BS from them as well.. cancelled it going back to bell for a better cheaper package.. Only got TV left with Rogers.. hmm can you say FTA?

Now Bell is a pain in the ass, and I know about the filtering they are doing to third party ISP's but its so nice the know that if I have a problem its only 30 seconds away from speaking with a real live competent human being, that will genuinely try to help..

And with TekSavvy if you refer people you get a discount.. so any switches PM me.. I would love a discount on my Bell filtered/Limited third-party service..:lmao: :lmao: 

Abysmal


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## corey111 (Jul 9, 2007)

I'd love to leave Rogers Internet, however I fear if I were to "Theoretically" leave Rogers, I would have to start "Theoretically" have to start paying for my "Supposed" cable TV.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

taco taco burrito said:


> sorry, who are you to decide how much is reasonable? rogers is just looking for excuses to charge more. it cost them nothing regardless of how much i use the internet or not... what they want is just a guarantee that they are gonna get $45 a month off of as many ppl as possible. they whole point for them is to get us all used to the idea of paying for a certain amount... so they can get $45 plus some more.
> Like i said before, the point isnt how much you use per month, the point is that something unlimited is now being limited. that is not what i signed up for.


Oh haven't you noticed that chas_m is the guardian of all things that are good, right, just and possible (at least in his own mind).

I agree with you completely. I live in Quebec and deal with Videotron, like you I signed up in the 90's soon as braodband became available and while my prices have been going up steadily, they kept my limit, well unlimited, until last year and put a cap of 100 GB on. As you say that isn't what you signed up for. 

What they are really doing here is making the people who are on the bleeding edge of things who really USE their braodband, pay for the eventual roll out of new technology to update their fiber-optic networks (see Nortel's announcement of March 12, 2008) that will HAVE to happen if they are to going to deliver on the promise of such things as HD movies on demand rich media delivery, the ever burgeoning use of cellular devices and their media capabilities.

It is always the way with any technology. The ones who blaze the way for everyone else by being early adopters (in this case being a high bandwidth user who actually uses the bandwidth) pay for those who follow and jump on the bandwagon. It sucks but unfortunately it is the way it is.


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## G-Mo (Sep 26, 2007)

guytoronto said:


> I've had Rogers Internet for almost 5 years. I doubt they'll appreciate me packing up and leaving.
> 
> Oh, and I'll be cancelling my cable service as well. If they can't provide my Internet, I don't want any of their services. Maybe I'll take the $200 hit on my cellular bill to get out of my contract and finally make the switch to Virgin.
> 
> Not a smart move Rogers.





guytoronto said:


> I sent Rogers an email expressing my dissatisfaction with the new plan, and my intentions to cancel my service.


Really, I doubt they'll care -- you are one fish in a VERY big lake... even if every Rogers user on ehmac were to cancel their accounts (if they could, contracts, etc...) it would be but a drop in the bucket...

Rogers has had caps for as long as I can remember, they've sent warnings when you regularly exceed them, but they haven't enforced them or charged -- their unlimited internet has never been unlimited... I have friends who had warnings that they were exceeding the limit as far back as early 2006...

I actually agree with Chas on this matter, I think 60GB/month is reasonable, and if you want more, you pay for it... I'm not sure about $2/GB, maybe $1/GB would be better, but, I agree with caps for home users... if you want truly unlimited get a business account (and look at what the prices are for THAT!)... I would say I have a home with 3 fairly agressive internet users, and we have never exceeded the 60GB/month on Bell...


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## guytoronto (Jun 25, 2005)

I think Rogers does care about losing regular customers. That's why they have a customer retention department, who swing sweet deals with people wanting to leave.

Last month I did 156GB transfer. Most of it is off-hours (middle of the night stuff). Unfortunately, what is reasonable for some isn't for others.

Rogers will lose me as a customer if they force me into it.


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## Mississauga (Oct 27, 2001)

chas_m said:


> Sorry guys, but I think this cap is entirely reasonable, the overage charge is fair, and the alternative is higher monthly fees for EVERYBODY. I was expecting a lot worse.
> 
> 60GB/month is PLENTY of "downloading" for anyone but the EXTREMELY greedy. If you really do need more, no problem! It's a reasonable amount for more ($20 for another 10GB), or perhaps what you really need is a business-class account.


My sentiments, exactly!

"We" are spoiled by cheap/fast ISP services. I'll take it one step further and say 30GB is plenty for most. My average is 10GB, spiking to 30GB on a busy month of servicing client Macs at my home office - updates and the like add up. If I were to receive an additional few bucks per month charges for "over-limit" usage, I wouldn't quibble at all. The memory of dial-up still lingers and I'm more than grateful for the "extreme" services I now receive.


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## irontree (Oct 28, 2006)

guytoronto said:


> I think Rogers does care about losing regular customers. That's why they have a customer retention department, who swing sweet deals with people wanting to leave.
> 
> Last month I did 156GB transfer. Most of it is off-hours (middle of the night stuff). Unfortunately, what is reasonable for some isn't for others.
> 
> Rogers will lose me as a customer if they force me into it.


Really? I don't think so. They don't give a rats ass how long you've been with them. I've been a Rogers customer for over a decade and we had a HUGE fiasco where there were charging us for serviced we no longer had and told us that becuase of the way the system was set up they could not have them permanently removed from our bill. There solution was to have someone monitor our account and removed the erroneous charges every month so we would not have to keep calling in every month complaining. This went on for a year. They never removed the charges and we had to keep calling... 
We threatened to cancel ALL of our services with them - cell, internet, and digital cable and they said" Oh sorry you feel that way but if that's what you want to do go right ahead you certainly have that right" They didn't give a crap that I had been with them for over a decade and that I gave them a fair chunk of cash every month. Plenty of fish in the sea for them...


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## Darien Red Sox (Oct 24, 2006)

The cabble co. who provides service whare I live dose not even give their real prices on their website, they give the promotional price of everything (Cable, TV, Phone) for $99 a month for the first year (billed at regular rate after first year in fine print) The regular rate for the cable is $50 a month, the regular rate for Phone and Internet is no whare to be found on the site. I talked to a repersentave and found out that after teh first year it is almost $140 with a singel bax! I did find a small Mom and Pop cable compney Adams Cable Service that gives no catch prices and you can get cable with HD, phone and internet for under $120 a month no catch. Plus you get good custmer servace. Problem: This compney is only in the PA area


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## Darien Red Sox (Oct 24, 2006)

I talked AT&T down in price by giving them the cable compneys promational price. Usaley the phone compneys will do anything to keep people from switching


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

G-Mo said:


> Really, I doubt they'll care -- you are one fish in a VERY big lake... even if every Rogers user on ehmac were to cancel their accounts (if they could, contracts, etc...) it would be but a drop in the bucket...
> 
> Rogers has had caps for as long as I can remember, they've sent warnings when you regularly exceed them, but they haven't enforced them or charged -- their unlimited internet has never been unlimited... I have friends who had warnings that they were exceeding the limit as far back as early 2006...
> 
> I actually agree with Chas on this matter, I think 60GB/month is reasonable, and if you want more, you pay for it... I'm not sure about $2/GB, maybe $1/GB would be better, but, I agree with caps for home users... if you want truly unlimited get a business account (and look at what the prices are for THAT!)... I would say I have a home with 3 fairly agressive internet users, and we have never exceeded the 60GB/month on Bell...



1/ they don't actually care, but they want your money. you just passively send $xxx amount per month. think about it. its not $50 a month, its $600 a year. and how often do you call them or do anything? hardly ever. they are getting low-maintenance cash off of you.

when you need to get something from them, dont talk to the first rep you get on the phone. tell them you are cancelling and they put you through to the cancellation dept. those guys have a lot more authority to give you stuff than a regular agent.

2/ what difference does it make what YOU think is reasonable. when i signed up for this service it was one thing. now they want it to be something else. they tried to disguise the notice that they were giving me less service for the same amount of money as something that they are somehow trying to improve the service and do me a big favour.
furthermore, its not the amount of cost per gb, $1 or $2, but just the fact that i would have to look out for something i didnt have to look out for. its all marketing and maximizing the amount of dollars they can get from you. believe me, whether you use more or less than 60gb per month, in the end, they are just trying to screw a few more bucks out of it.


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## Mr. Fartleberry (Dec 17, 2005)

*The Devil you Know*



irontree said:


> They didn't give a crap that I had been with them for over a decade and that I gave them a fair chunk of cash every month. Plenty of fish in the sea for them...


 
That's pretty well it. The old "churn rate". What really irks me is they will spend 50 bucks a year dumping junk mail on me but once your hooked you're cleaned and fried over and over again.
- I actually know people that still have newsgroup access.
- Rogers is my number one spam source. I look at distribution lists and it's evident spammers crack Rogers on a regular basis. 

The reason I dumped Bell on their assets is because it took them 7 years to put high speed in the middle of Mississauga while they outfitted Rainy Lake and Timbuctu. This just in: they don't give a rat's asset about existing customers either. 

I could go on ... and on ...


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## harzack86 (Jan 30, 2005)

Mississauga said:


> My sentiments, exactly!
> 
> "We" are spoiled by cheap/fast ISP services. I'll take it one step further and say 30GB is plenty for most. My average is 10GB, spiking to 30GB on a busy month of servicing client Macs at my home office - updates and the like add up. If I were to receive an additional few bucks per month charges for "over-limit" usage, I wouldn't quibble at all. The memory of dial-up still lingers and I'm more than grateful for the "extreme" services I now receive.


This is a very subjective statment. I find that we have no choice as Canadian consumers but follow their rules, and that compared to services outside of Canada, the Internet service is expensive, not fast, and capped.
It's fair to say that everyone's usage may vary, and that subscriptions should be made according to these customer's differences. If there are options that fits your need, then it's perfect, but in the current case, Canadian ISP are lacking high end options with unlimited Internet access.
I don't mind paying for a service I need, but in this case, I feel more like I'm paying for Rogers stakeholders or the next vacation of Rogers CEO, rather than funding investments to overcome their technical shortcomings about bandwidth and scaling...
So again, one service can be good for you, but others may have different needs, and that too need to be considered


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

you know its so easy to dis' rogers and bell. they are both awful companies in that they just suck the maximum out of you, and are totally impersonal etc... this is obvious. there is so much "i hate rogers", "i hate bell" kind of stuff out there.

i need other options. that is essentially why i made this thread. 
i realize that they are all probably companies that likely go through bell or rogers, but at least i can put some distance between them and me. and find a company that doesnt have a cap.

anyone here use primus? telus? all these companies seem to offer dsl. is there any companies out there that sell cable internet other than rogers?


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## irontree (Oct 28, 2006)

I hate Rogers Cable, Rogers Video, Rogers wireless, Rogers mobility, Rogers AT&T, Rogers Internet and son and so forth - get it, ihaterogers, ihaterogers.ca.


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## harzack86 (Jan 30, 2005)

taco taco, did you check this site:

Canadian ISP - Find an Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Canada


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## G-Mo (Sep 26, 2007)

taco taco burrito said:


> 2/ what difference does it make what YOU think is reasonable. when i signed up for this service it was one thing. now they want it to be something else. they tried to disguise the notice that they were giving me less service for the same amount of money as something that they are somehow trying to improve the service and do me a big favour.
> furthermore, its not the amount of cost per gb, $1 or $2, but just the fact that i would have to look out for something i didnt have to look out for. its all marketing and maximizing the amount of dollars they can get from you. believe me, whether you use more or less than 60gb per month, in the end, they are just trying to screw a few more bucks out of it.


If you look at the terms of your original service you will discover there was always a cap!! Rogers has never had "unlimited" internet service for the home market no matter how they advertised it (it always had a cap in the T&Cs)... To date they have never enforced you exceeding it, now they are... in fact, you are NOW getting exactly what you signed up for, whereas previously, they were letting you, mostly, get away with whatever you wanted...


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

G-Mo said:


> If you look at the terms of your original service you will discover there was always a cap!! Rogers has never had "unlimited" internet service for the home market no matter how they advertised it (it always had a cap in the T&Cs)... To date they have never enforced you exceeding it, now they are... in fact, you are NOW getting exactly what you signed up for, whereas previously, they were letting you, mostly, get away with whatever you wanted...


Bingo! Rogers has always capped their allowed monthly bandwidth for as long as I can recall. Well put.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

Howard2k said:


> Are you referring to DWDM?


That link that screature posted was what I was referring to:
Nortel: News Releases: Nortel Meets Bandwidth Explosion with New, Revolutionary 40G to 100G Optical Solution


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

harzack86 said:


> taco taco, did you check this site:
> 
> Canadian ISP - Find an Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Canada




thanks dude! ill totally check this out!


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

taco taco burrito said:


> rogers is just looking for excuses to charge more. it cost them nothing regardless of how much i use the internet or not...


So you think the money you pay Rogers is pure profit for them?
It cost them nothing to provide internet service to you?


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

G-Mo said:


> If you look at the terms of your original service you will discover there was always a cap!! Rogers has never had "unlimited" internet service for the home market no matter how they advertised it (it always had a cap in the T&Cs)... To date they have never enforced you exceeding it, now they are... in fact, you are NOW getting exactly what you signed up for, whereas previously, they were letting you, mostly, get away with whatever you wanted...


whatever. i dont have an agreement to check that with, and further, im wasting enough time already. they are changing the service ive been getting and im not doing this for the fun of an arguing in a forum on ehmac. you know that rogers would **** you and your grandma in a second if it made them a buck.


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

It does look like Teksavvy's "cap" might as well not be considered a cap at all.

Their limit is 200GB.

But *above* 200GB they charge "Additional Bandwidth - $0.25/GB/mo."

That's really 25 cents per additional GB, and only above 200GB. The monthly fee is less, and there's no contract.

Too bad about the throttling though.


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

krs said:


> So you think the money you pay Rogers is pure profit for them?
> It cost them nothing to provide internet service to you?



pretty much. i know it costs them for employees and so on... rogers is a huge company with huge money. im not trying to get something for nothing. i pay for everything, life is expensive, thats just how it is, but ya, i think what they get off of me is pretty much pure profit... 

so what are you saying? do you think that rogers has to spend a significant portion of my $45 per month just to give me that service?


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## G-Mo (Sep 26, 2007)

taco taco burrito said:


> whatever. i dont have an agreement to check that with


Of course.......... 



taco taco burrito said:


> they are changing the service ive been getting


No -- they are enforcing the service YOU are abusing!



taco taco burrito said:


> im wasting enough time already... im not doing this for the fun of an arguing in a forum on ehmac


Great -- we'll expect no more ignorant posts from you on the matter then?!


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

G-Mo said:


> Of course..........
> 
> 
> 
> ...


you are calling me ignorant? ...i dont see you posting sources for anything you've said. if you are so keen, why dont you find your old contract and quote it.

and again, who are you to judge me as an abuser? whats the criteria for that? 

oh and you are contributing to this conversation how? 
your opinion? well it doesnt really help... are you just bored or something?


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## Sparhawk (Aug 19, 2006)

Right now I have everything with Rogers as well.
I hate the tv package. The basic package is not basic, as it has foreign **** on it Sunday mornings and other times as well. Rogers won't take the blame for it.

Then the iPhone. As far as I know, two reasons why it's not here yet. The iPhone was already registered, just not by Apple and Rogers won't give in into unlimited data package for the iPhone.

I knew about the cap of 60Gig, so far I am happy with it. But from this point, there are two ways this could go sour on us. Right now 60Gig is still considered quite something. How far in the future will this be below standard? Will it be upped then? Or are we going to have pay more for it?
Second, is Rogers going to lower the 60Gig in the future. I could see this happen as offering a low user package deal. A high user would be paying anything, say over 25Gig.

So far... Rogers is not evil or bad. They are not into charity either.
But they can and should improve the customer service and experience.
That means, when complaining about foreign **** on your tv, you shouldn't have to talk to an employee you can not understand... the irony.

As far as p2p and all that, it's just another way to make you pay more in the end for something you already had. Just like DRM. It should not happen and it is wrong... but if you are not in power, you can not do **** all, unless there is an alternative.

In the end, where ever the iPhone ends up, that's where I will end up.


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

taco taco burrito said:


> pretty much. i know it costs them for employees and so on... rogers is a huge company with huge money. im not trying to get something for nothing. i pay for everything, life is expensive, thats just how it is, but ya, i think what they get off of me is pretty much pure profit...


You would be wrong then. Rogers makes very little money of of TV and Internet right now (maybe a few dollars per subscriber). They make most of their money in wireless services.



> so what are you saying? do you think that rogers has to spend a significant portion of my $45 per month just to give me that service?


Yes. Fibre, copper, facilities, routers, management software, staff, etc. are all very expensive to purchase and maintain. Far more than a few dollars per customer.

What Rogers is doing here is realistic and appropriately priced. Much more sensible than throttling bandwidth, which I hope they stop doing now that they have a good pricing and capping structure.


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## Mr. Fartleberry (Dec 17, 2005)

irontree said:


> I hate Rogers Cable, Rogers Video, Rogers wireless, Rogers mobility, Rogers AT&T, Rogers Internet and son and so forth - get it, ihaterogers, ihaterogers.ca.


Now why wasn't that in my Rogers Sign up and Save package? :clap:


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## i-rui (Sep 13, 2006)

I emailed 3web to see if they have the same 60gb cap and it seems they do. I wonder if they'll also enforce the cap with the same penalties...hmmm

I'm considering techsavy, but did anyone else see the marketplace report where they measured Bell's DSL service? It seems that many customers were getting as little as 12% of their supposed speed. yikes. The last time i tried Bell it was noticeably slower than Rogers... but that was about 2.5 years ago...

On a side not, i really am sad to see so many people defending Rogers actions. If this was a competitive marketplace they would never think of doing many of their business practices. And once they implement these new policies they will NOT give an inch back to customers. If they decide to up their 60gb cap you can be sure it will be justified with a price increase. It truly is a shame we don't have competitive options in canada.


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## G-Mo (Sep 26, 2007)

taco taco burrito said:


> if you are so keen, why dont you find your old contract and quote it.


I've never been with Rogers, so I have no contract to quote. I have, however, worked with them and I am aware of how their contracts work, dating back to 2004 when the bandwidth "cap" was 10-15GB/month but they let it fly unless there were issues with service in your area in which case they would look at the top 5 bandwidth users in the area and contacted them with an email, letter and/or phonecall first, then they were suspended for 7 days, then disconnected from the service.

I'll rephrase the use of the word abuse, as it could be taken too harsh, and instead say exceed...

Really there should be no shock about this -- when Rogers first started enforcing downloads, Sympatico went truly "unlimited" (for a period) and a lot of people jumped ship, but for at least the last 18 months their cap has been, oh, 60GB/month...


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## Guest (Mar 27, 2008)

No letter from Rogers here yet ... but I'm moving in around 6 weeks and they will lose my business. They refuse to email me anything as I refuse to use their email servers. At one point they tried to tell me that if I didn't use a rogers email account they would refuse me tech support ... I escalated that one promptly and they backed down (but they still said they would not be able to email me anything unless I used their email service).

As for it "always" being in their T&C that's not true, it has been for the last few years, but when I signed up with them about 8 years ago there was no mention of specific bandwidth cap limits, they only reserved the right to cap "abusers".

60G is not enough for my needs. I spend 12 hours a day on VPN, I regularly transfer large video projects with co-workers and I do a lot of video streaming (both incoming and outgoing) as well as using Skype daily. I think that they would have a very hard time convincing me that I am "abusing" their connection.

Anyway there's not much to be done about it. They are losing ALL my business (internet, cell phone) and I'll be going with Teksavvy at my new house and I'll be sure to tell them exactly why when I call to cancel my services. I have a gift at being able to get things escalated with the appropriate providers and will be sure to make sure that people beyond level 1 hear my complaints


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## G-Mo (Sep 26, 2007)

mguertin said:


> 60G is not enough for my needs. I spend 12 hours a day on VPN, I regularly transfer large video projects with co-workers and I do a lot of video streaming (both incoming and outgoing) as well as using Skype daily. I think that they would have a very hard time convincing me that I am "abusing" their connection.


It all depends on how you define "abuse" -- everyone seems to be tied in to the idea that "abuse" is torrent downloads or something shady... the fact of the matter is, mguertin, you are using a "home" internet connection for what sounds an awful lot like "business" use to me... which is beyond the scope of what the "home" internet package is designated for... Why don't you look at a small business package, which currently doesn't seem to have any monthly usage allowances and is only marginally more expensive (I was surprised, to be honest!):

http://your.rogers.com/business/productsservices/internetservices/access/businessinternetaccess.asp


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

G-Mo said:


> It all depends on how you define "abuse" -- everyone seems to be tied in to the idea that "abuse" is torrent downloads or something shady... the fact of the matter is, mguertin, you are using a "home" internet connection for what sounds an awful lot like "business" use to me... which is beyond the scope of what the "home" internet package is designated for... Why don't you look at a small business package, which currently doesn't seem to have any monthly usage allowances and is only marginally more expensive (I was surprised, to be honest!):
> 
> http://your.rogers.com/business/productsservices/internetservices/access/businessinternetaccess.asp


who are you? mr. burns?

you know the only thing more worthless to rogers than a rogers customer? its a rogers employee...

i work at home a lot too. so should i get a business internet service? i mean just to be honest? its all about marketing. and squeezing the most that you can from your client base...

what really sucks about this is that i actually like bell a lot less than rogers. it seems like they are the only real competitors. if there was another real competitor, rogers or bell would probably just buy it out and squash it. im no expert but it doesnt take one to figure this out.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

hayesk said:


> You would be wrong then. Rogers makes very little money of of TV and Internet right now (maybe a few dollars per subscriber). They make most of their money in wireless services.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


The current cost to lay new fibre is $70 000 per mile.
That's just to put the fibre into the ground; doesn't include any of the other costs mentioned.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

i-rui said:


> On a side not, i really am sad to see so many people defending Rogers actions.


It's not so much defending Rogers but rather to bring some rationale, logic and facts into this discussion.


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## Paddy (Jul 13, 2004)

I'm certainly not going to defend any of the Canadian providers, but had to respond to this statement:



> I find that we have no choice as Canadian consumers but follow their rules, and that compared to services outside of Canada, the Internet service is expensive, not fast, and capped.


Having returned to Canada last year after 16 years living in the US, I think you're dreaming - at least if you're referring to any services in North America! Everywhere I lived in the US there was only one choice for cable - whatever local cable company had the monopoly with the town or city - and in a lot of places there was no DSL. Speeds with Comcast in MA were identical to Rogers in Toronto and the price of services (I have Extreme) are about the same. Same arbitrary and ever-increasing rates, same throttling of P-to-P, etc. etc. I couldn't get DSL there and I can't get it here - and I didn't live in the sticks there and certainly don't here (no DSL where I live in LEASIDE??). 

About the only places in the world with _consistently_ better speeds and prices are Japan and South Korea - there are other countries where higher speeds are advertised, but rarely achieved. See: BBC NEWS | Technology | Broadband speeds around the world
BBC NEWS | Technology | Global broadband prices revealed

According to a Japanese friend of ours who moved here two years ago, the Japanese service was very good and cheaper than it is here. But that's one of the few things in Japan that IS cheaper than here, and you do need to realize that Japan's population density and the overall size of the country are very different from here. 

And if you really want to whine about the cost/speed/caps, try moving to NZ:

Broadband Internet Access Service Providers New Zealand, VOIP, Wired, Wireless & Prepaid Broadband Plans NZ (the NZ dollar is worth about 82¢ CDN, but still - and read the fine print too...)

Almost every country in the world is facing a demand for services that is threatening to overwhelm the existing infrastructure, so capping and traffic shaping are taking place to deal with it, along with the scramble to expand the ability of the networks to handle the higher traffic demands. In small, densely populated countries, it's much easier to upgrade physical networks - in places like Canada and the US, it's more difficult and far more expensive.

Those are the realities - none of which excuse bad/incompetent customer service. 

As for whether or not the caps are reasonable - consider that most Rogers customers probably use around 10-20MB a month tops, and it is only 10-20% of the customers who use a lot more than that. In our household of 4, three of us are heavy internet users - two teens who play WoW and spend many of their waking hours on Facebook/MSN etc. and me - I do website design and administer another online Mac forum. Our monthly usage rarely exceeds 20MB. The difference is that we don't download much video.

If you really want something to complain about - complain about the ridiculous cost of cell service in Canada. With Verizon in the US, I had excellent service just about everywhere, NO long distance or roaming charges, 2 phones with 700 anytime minutes and free evenings and weekends, voice mail, caller ID - all for $69.99/mo. (and the phones were free on a 2 yr. contract) Adding an extra phone to the plan? $9.99 a month. Here? I'm paying about $95/mo for two phones, paid for one of the phones in order to get something better than the cheesy base model, and get way fewer minutes and most significantly - they charge long distance for any call outside of the local Toronto 416/647/905 area.


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## harzack86 (Jan 30, 2005)

Do any fellow ehmac member from Ottawa use NCF as an ISP and can tell what their experience is with them?


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

krs said:


> The current cost to lay new fibre is $70 000 per mile.
> That's just to put the fibre into the ground; doesn't include any of the other costs mentioned.


that doesnt seem too expensive at all, relatively speaking. 
say there are 100 households paying rogers $50 a month. thats $5000, isnt it? so thats 14 months to pay for the 70 grand. and you can bet that they have more than 100 subscribers for that 1 mile stretch. and they will all be paying monthly for years. i dont know. anyways, this is interesting.

is there some little freeware thing that would actally keep track of how much internet i use? would be interesting to see.


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

taco taco burrito said:


> i work at home a lot too. so should i get a business internet service? i mean just to be honest? its all about marketing. and squeezing the most that you can from your client base...


Well, yes, you should get a business Internet service. If you are using more bandwidth than the average home user, why shouldn't you? As the web page shows, you do actually get more for your money.

Is it all about marketing? Well, partially I agree with you. But what's with the sense of entitlement that people have here? Why do you think your Internet usage should be subsidized by the casual users? Rogers is a business - not a social program. I don't work for Rogers, I'm not a Rogers fan-boy (far from it), but let's be honest here. Why do you think you should be able download as much data as you want without paying for it? 

If you use more, you should pay more - it's as simple as that.


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

taco taco burrito said:


> that doesnt seem too expensive at all, relatively speaking.
> say there are 100 households paying rogers $50 a month. thats $5000, isnt it? so thats 14 months to pay for the 70 grand. and you can bet that they have more than 100 subscribers for that 1 mile stretch. and they will all be paying monthly for years. i dont know. anyways, this is interesting.


Don't forget the copper cable loops through each neighbourhood, the switches, the routers, the housing for all of this, the people, the NOC facilities, etc. - that $70,000 figure was for a piece of fibre alone. 14 months just for ROI on the fibre by itself - that's very expensive!


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## Kosh (May 27, 2002)

G-Mo said:


> If you look at the terms of your original service you will discover there was always a cap!! Rogers has never had "unlimited" internet service for the home market no matter how they advertised it (it always had a cap in the T&Cs)... To date they have never enforced you exceeding it, now they are... in fact, you are NOW getting exactly what you signed up for, whereas previously, they were letting you, mostly, get away with whatever you wanted...


 
That's a BS excuse. When I signed up, they didn't even have all the ,what is it now, 4 speeds of internet access. If this was true it would have to spell out the cap per speed because they have a different cap per service. And since they have a different cap per service, it also proves it's a cash grab, just like the different speeds, because the use the same hardware and same software for all the services. This also means that my going over 60GB (when I occasionally do which is maybe once a year) does not hurt anybody on their network or cause them to have to upgrade thier system.

No, I'm on the same page as Taco with this one. It's a cash grab, pure and simple. It's the same as when they pulled my old savings bundle for a new savings bundle. They just want more cash for the same service. My service didn't change or improve.


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## Kosh (May 27, 2002)

hayesk said:


> Yes. Fibre, copper, facilities, routers, management software, staff, etc. are all very expensive to purchase and maintain. Far more than a few dollars per customer.
> 
> What Rogers is doing here is realistic and appropriately priced. Much more sensible than throttling bandwidth, which I hope they stop doing now that they have a good pricing and capping structure.


BS. They can switch me in an instant to their higher bandwidth service with a higher download cap in a matter of minutes. It requires no upgrades on their side at all. They use the same equipment for all their consumer services. They even tell you in the letter that you can select a better service. Ted Rogers just wants a higher profit and a bigger bonus.


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## harzack86 (Jan 30, 2005)

hayesk said:


> Don't forget the copper cable loops through each neighbourhood, the switches, the routers, the housing for all of this, the people, the NOC facilities, etc. - that $70,000 figure was for a piece of fibre alone. 14 months just for ROI on the fibre by itself - that's very expensive!


I'm not technical enough to know, but I wonder how all this compare to emerging technologies such as Wimax for the cost of implementation.


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## G-Mo (Sep 26, 2007)

hayesk said:


> Well, yes, you should get a business Internet service. If you are using more bandwidth than the average home user, why shouldn't you? As the web page shows, you do actually get more for your money.
> 
> Is it all about marketing? Well, partially I agree with you. But what's with the sense of entitlement that people have here? Why do you think your Internet usage should be subsidized by the casual users? Rogers is a business - not a social program. I don't work for Rogers, I'm not a Rogers fan-boy (far from it), but let's be honest here. Why do you think you should be able download as much data as you want without paying for it?
> 
> If you use more, you should pay more - it's as simple as that.


:clap:


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

hayesk said:


> Don't forget the copper cable loops through each neighbourhood, the switches, the routers, the housing for all of this, the people, the NOC facilities, etc. - that $70,000 figure was for a piece of fibre alone. 14 months just for ROI on the fibre by itself - that's very expensive!



hey i pulled that number out of my butt. but think about a mile. thats a lot more than 100 subscribers unless it rural area. i know there are other costs. there are all kinds of other factors. in a densely populated area that 1 mile could cover 1000 households or who knows. i dont but im sure rogers does and thats why they lay it. to make more money. not because they are so diligently trying to help everyone. and thats fine.


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

hayesk said:


> Well, yes, you should get a business Internet service. If you are using more bandwidth than the average home user, why shouldn't you? As the web page shows, you do actually get more for your money.
> 
> Is it all about marketing? Well, partially I agree with you. But what's with the sense of entitlement that people have here? Why do you think your Internet usage should be subsidized by the casual users? Rogers is a business - not a social program. I don't work for Rogers, I'm not a Rogers fan-boy (far from it), but let's be honest here. Why do you think you should be able download as much data as you want without paying for it?
> 
> If you use more, you should pay more - it's as simple as that.


still just a cash grab.

id think it was totally fair both in this and in cell phone minutes if cost were based on usage. say for instance, and to use a round number, $1 for a gb. straight up. no base fee. no nickel and diming. 
so for all the ppl out there who are "paying for it for me", maybe that would be fair. and the 10gb per month user should pay $10 for there cable connection...
straight up and uncomplicated. yup id say that would be fair. and imagine cellphones if they were like that? youd actually know how much stuff costs. so i want either extreme. that or just flat rates for unlimited usage.
oh but rogers wouldnt want that. they make a lot more when ppl use less than they pay for. only way you get ppl to do that is to keep it complicated.


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## i-rui (Sep 13, 2006)

Digital Home Canada - Wireless powers Rogers profits up 23%

Let's not kid ourselves.
they're not making money hand over fist by being "FAIR" to customers.
They basically have a monopoly on certain services and they're running free with their hands in customers pockets.


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

taco taco burrito said:


> still just a cash grab.


That phrase is used so much it has lost all meaning. People seem to forget that Rogers is just a business. Businesses make money. If you don't like it, go somewhere else.

Is a "cash grab" a bad thing? Isn't what you want just "a bandwidth grab."

Even if Rogers had a monopoly, wanting to charge heavy users more than light users is not exactly an abuse of their position. You likely aren't going to get any sympathy except from other heavy users.


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## ..........? (Dec 25, 2005)

Too bad you can't get telus. Telus is not the fastest but the service is very stables. It doesn't have speed up or slow down at any hours. They don't enforce their caps or charge you for extra bandwidth. 

Also, Rogers better step up their games since CBC did a thing on how people are projecting that with HD streaming video coming soon. There would not be enough bandwidth and internet will slow down and people will just give up on the internet.


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

I think much of it has to do with the fact that a place like Rogers puts all of these ideas into play with their advertising. They say you can watch movies, use the Internet, do all kinds of things. But then they start capping, which means that you can not watch all of the movies that they promised. And then they start with the crazy rate hikes, as if they don't want you as a customer anymore.

I never thought that it was a good idea to promise things that the Internet is not really designed to do. Like Internet Radio. In the old days, we had real radio stations with real live disc jockeys, and you could pick up pretty much any music you wanted. Now, really, the stations are nothing more than giant sized iPods with limited selections of the same repeated songs, ad nauseum. So people resort to the Internet to do what, thirty years ago, you could do with a transistor.

Same with movies, which are expensive to go to. It is worth it if the movie is actually good but, well, not much comes out of Hollywood that is anything beyond mildly amusing. Last year I went to see that No Old Men In The Country, and really, how did it win an Oscar? The Carl Sagan lookalike with the bolt gun was cool, and seeing him kill Woody Harrelson was also cool - but not worth the money paid. No wonder why people download movies off of the Internet - you have to make sure they are actually good before you bother to go see them at the theater!

I think capping downloads should be done, so that everyone can share the backbone of the Internet. But they should not just pick on certain transfers, like throttling torrents because as it stands now, considering the size of files for such things as OS X updates or software that has to be downloaded because it is not distributed by disk any more, torrents will only become even more common place. The CBC has even gone to torrents, as well as NBC and Universal who are currently experimenting. This because the demand for streaming video is causing brownouts on the backbone already.

It should be done intelligently. I think it is reasonable to throttle torrents and large data transfers during peak hours, and then release bandwidth during times of low use. Torrents are designed for this, and operate on much the same principles as the Internet itself. So perhaps in the evening, torrents could be limited to say, 25kB/s (or whatever number), then throttled up in the middle of the night (to the highest speeds). This would be entirely fair. Same with things like software updates, which could easily be distributed in the middle of the night; and for larger places, the files could be sent via torrent so that an entire network of machines can be updated with one download.

Same with download capping, if it is done intelligently. A cap should be large enough to handle what is advertised. So if they advertise movies, the cap should be quite a bit higher than if they advertise something like Skype. And I would see nothing wrong with a quota system with discounts. More of the quota would be chewed up for transfers performed at peak periods, while less would be used at quiet times. Maybe something like, you can download 40GB during the day and evening, but 100GB at night - or whatever. These numbers can be worked out - published, and made fair for users. Same with charges for overuse, a reasonable rate that takes into account the use of transfers at peak times in comparison to quiet times.

Charges should be based on the fact that for $1.46, I can have a coffee while downloading a GB at the local hotspot! Since Bell and Rogers don't serve you coffee while you download, their charges should be scaled appropriately.

And then again, sometimes Sneakernet is perhaps the fastest and cheapest way to push large amounts of data...


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## harzack86 (Jan 30, 2005)

hayesk said:


> If you don't like it, go somewhere else.


I think this phrase is also used too often and lost its meaning  
And this bounce back to the OP original question: where is "somewhere else"?


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

harzack86 said:


> I think this phrase is also used too often and lost its meaning


Touché.


> And this bounce back to the OP original question: where is "somewhere else"?


If there is nowhere else to go, then isn't that an indication that unlimited bandwidth is not a viable business model?


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## Kosh (May 27, 2002)

hayesk said:


> That phrase is used so much it has lost all meaning. People seem to forget that Rogers is just a business. Businesses make money. If you don't like it, go somewhere else.


That's easy to say, not to do. The only other company that sells internet and TV services that I'm aware of is Bell. You go from one of the two monopolies to the other. Not a REAL solution. And in my mind Bell is even worse than Rogers. I was on the verge of changing my phone service the first year I moved into my new home, until Bell finally fixed things - but that's another story.


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

Kosh said:


> That's easy to say, not to do. The only other company that sells internet and TV services that I'm aware of is Bell. You go from one of the two monopolies to the other. Not a REAL solution.


Starchoice + plenty of DSL services. Again, I'll repeat, I think it's becoming clear that no businesses want to offer unlimited bandwidth. If it made good business sense, somebody would be doing it.


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## harzack86 (Jan 30, 2005)

hayesk said:


> If there is nowhere else to go, then isn't that an indication that unlimited bandwidth is not a viable business model?


I 100% agree with you on that, but then it should not be advertised or promised somehow or there should be appropriate options for heavy internet users.

This is probably a lame comparison, but let's say that if GM knew that the Cobalt is good enough for 90% of the car consumers and has a minimum impact on our environment with low gas consumtion, why do they still offer a Corvette to purchase?
There is a need, and some people with this need and enough money will pay for that luxury car... even if it consumes more gas than a Cobalt and has a bad impact on our environment...


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## (( p g )) (Aug 17, 2002)

Sorry but I just don't see what all the fuss is about. The 60GB/month cap has been talked about for quite some time online...heck Rogers even started including a usage metre as user-accessible feature on its website...and I think that was well over a year ago. I consider my household to be a pretty heavy user of online services...including generous helpings of media downloads from ITMS. I've been monitoring my usage for months, and we don't come even close to the 60GB cap. Apparently that's the case for most who have been tracking this. 

So we can only speculate as to what could be causing a select few to surpass that cap.


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## Guest (Mar 27, 2008)

G-Mo said:


> It all depends on how you define "abuse" -- everyone seems to be tied in to the idea that "abuse" is torrent downloads or something shady... the fact of the matter is, mguertin, you are using a "home" internet connection for what sounds an awful lot like "business" use to me... which is beyond the scope of what the "home" internet package is designated for... Why don't you look at a small business package, which currently doesn't seem to have any monthly usage allowances and is only marginally more expensive (I was surprised, to be honest!):
> 
> http://your.rogers.com/business/productsservices/internetservices/access/businessinternetaccess.asp


Rogers doesn't offer that package for where I live. I did phone Rogers at one point asking specifically if I could get a business package with a static IP address. They told me flat out "no." Therefore I use what they suggested, which is the package I'm currently on, and that the possibility of getting a static IP address was "not an option for residential service" -- even though they couldn't sell me business service... The way that they handled this left me with the impression that because I made these requests I might have been doing something "shady" with my connection.

Also, just because I'm connected to a VPN don't ASSume that it's for business purposes. This leads back to the problem with the ISPs right now, in that they ASSume if you download via torrents you're downloading illegal content and that you should be treated accordingly, and they also ASSume that more than 60G per month is abusing the "unlimited high-speed" account they are selling us all.

Sorry if I sound like I'm venting on you, I'm not intending to single you out, just trying to make a point on how they are treating their customers.


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

hayesk said:


> That phrase is used so much it has lost all meaning. People seem to forget that Rogers is just a business. Businesses make money. If you don't like it, go somewhere else.
> 
> Is a "cash grab" a bad thing? Isn't what you want just "a bandwidth grab."
> 
> Even if Rogers had a monopoly, wanting to charge heavy users more than light users is not exactly an abuse of their position. You likely aren't going to get any sympathy except from other heavy users.



it is a cash grab. they have tons of customers who are too lazy to switch isps and dont care if they have to pay $2 more or whatever. well, its not $2, its up to $25 i think. and this is how you start to work it over. make little extra costs. its the beginning of them trying to get the isp side of rogers making more money.

you know i doubt ill ever download more than 60gb per month* anyways, but that is not the point.... the point is they are trying to get more out of it.

seriously they should give ppl $2 off for each gig below 60 that they dont download. then id be happy to pay if i went over.


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## Guest (Mar 27, 2008)

I'd have to agree that I would balk a LOT less if they introduced a tiered pricing format for bandwidth usage instead of a one-size-fits-all cap on things. "Heavy" users (in their terms "abusers") would have to pay more according to the amount of bandwidth they require and would at least have an idea how much their monthly bills would be.

I'd love to see a wholesale approach to bandwith from someone. You pay $____ for your monthly connection with ___GB of bandwidth, and then buy blocks of ___GB for $____/mnth. No filtering of content, no throttling of protocols, no "web space" or email addresses, just an IP address (or block if you prefer) and some bandwidth. It might be more than the average consumer wants to deal with, but for the "power users" it would be delightful.


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## (( p g )) (Aug 17, 2002)

taco taco burrito said:


> you know i doubt ill ever download more than 60gb per month* anyways, but that is not the point.... the point is they are trying to get more out of it.


That's one way of looking at it. Another is that a cap sends a message to people to be responsible with their bandwidth usage and to be prepared to pay extra to cover the costs of being a high-bandwidth user. Kinda like what we do with water and electricity.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

I always thought people who post on ehMac had at least some basic understanding of technology, but when it comes to the internet, it seems a lot don't have a clue how it works or what's involved when you click on a link.
Bandwidth costs money! Each pipe has a limited capacity depending on the technology used, the 70 000/mile fibre cost I mentioned earlier is not the pipe to individual homes, most of that is still copper or coax, and Rogers or Bell can do precious little to increase capacity to alleviate the slow down the CBC report was talking about.
These are just a few points where some people have absolutely no understanding about the net when I read through the posts in this thread.


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## Kosh (May 27, 2002)

taco taco burrito said:


> it is a cash grab. they have tons of customers who are too lazy to switch isps and dont care if they have to pay $2 more or whatever. well, its not $2, its up to $25 i think. and this is how you start to work it over. make little extra costs. its the beginning of them trying to get the isp side of rogers making more money.
> 
> you know i doubt ill ever download more than 60gb per month* anyways, but that is not the point.... the point is they are trying to get more out of it.
> 
> seriously they should give ppl $2 off for each gig below 60 that they dont download. then id be happy to pay if i went over.


Yeah to me it's not necessarily the cap that's the problem, for now, but I can see the day coming when it will be. The other thing is that Rogers loves getting money for nothing and making changes that change nothing except to make me pay more. I gave an example in another thread, i had a savings bundle which they claim expired or was discontinued, so they put me choose another bundle that had the same exact services and features and costed me $30 more. No choice, if I wanted that same service and features, nothing new added. Previous to that was the HD bundle that they all of sudden cut out of the current services I had and decided I should start paying extra for, again nothing new, but the same thing. Over time these things start adding up.


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## i-rui (Sep 13, 2006)

Everyone who thinks 60gb is "more than enough" is short sighted. 

Maybe today it is, but the future will bring the need for more and more online content. Apple TV rentals, online gaming, video conferencing and chatting...etc..etc...

Remember when 1GB of RAM was a huge amount? The nature of technology is it's always expanding. Just because you're not on the bleeding edge of using that service now doesn't mean you won't be tomorrow.

Once Rogers has entrenched the idea that 60gb is a reasonable cap for the service they offer (which by the way IS NOT running consistently at the speeds they advertise) then they've set up future price increases to charge more and more for service that is needed to keep our technology current. They'll NEVER give customers more bandwidth for no extra charge even after they've upgraded their networks.

If everyone was to upgrade their service to the Ultimate package tomorrow none of us would see an actual change in the service provided because their network wouldn't be able to handle any extra traffic (until they upgrade their network). They're basically going to use this extra money to (eventually) upgrade their network and then charge us even more for improved service. Thus having their cake and eating it too.


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## (( p g )) (Aug 17, 2002)

krs said:


> Each pipe has a limited capacity depending on the technology used,


Tubes, krs. The internets are made of a series of tubes...


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## (( p g )) (Aug 17, 2002)

i-rui said:


> Everyone who thinks 60gb is "more than enough" is short sighted.


I'll worry about 60GB/month not being enough for me when I start seeing my usage come even close to that. Just like what I'll do when 4GB of RAM will no longer do. 

But for right now and the foreseeable future, this cap seems a reasonable tradeoff in exchange for reliable service.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

I still have to agree with taco taco burrito, the cap and charging for "overages" is a cash grab. Why? Because it has become apparent from the many people who have posted here that they don't come close to using up their available bandwidth (and I am sure most people here are pretty heavy users of bandwidth) in conjunction with the fact that I am relatively sure MOST people don't come close to using their available bandwidth. So what does this translate to, excess bandwidth from the average user. They are training the heavier user to expect to pay more for more usage of the available bandwidth, that way when the backbone of the networks are up to snuff to accommodate the demands of HD and the like we will not be surprised by what they are asking us to pay.

It is a basic premise of capitalism, charge what the market will bear. If you accept the price, then that is the price, if you stop buying then they have to reduce their prices or increase their internal efficiencies to maintain their profit margins.

The notion that if you don't like it go somewhere else is absurd in a heavily regulated and nearly monopolized market as this. If we could we would. There is little true competition in this industry, they know that they have us by the short and curlies and they take advantage of it.

Do you forget the days of negative billing where you had to take what they gave you and if you didn't like it you had to opt out. It was only because of public outrage that the practice stopped. I'm sorry but I think too many people here are acting like sheep and believing exactly what these near monopolies want you to believe. 

Why would anyone willingly sacrifice their hard earned dollars to maintain the profit margins of multi-billion dollar companies? As long as you think it is "reasonable" it will be. If enough people say "no it is too much" and it starts to hit them on the bottom line they will have to get better at what they do and how they do it.


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## Adrian. (Nov 28, 2007)

Agreed 200% 

I have lived in the UK, France, Mexico, US and Australia and I am sorry to say it but canadians are by far the most willing to let companies and the goveremt tell them how it is. Get support and go have a little protest or two. Heck if you are really mad start a riot. Civil liberties exist for a reason. This country is turning into an oligarchy.


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## 5andman (Oct 15, 2006)

Digital Home Canada - Rogers High Speed introduces new fee structure

I don't see it on my bill. 
Is this just for people who live in houses?
(I live in a condo)


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## ender78 (Jan 23, 2005)

Adrian. said:


> Agreed 200%
> 
> I have lived in the UK, France, Mexico, US and Australia and I am sorry to say it but canadians are by far the most willing to let companies and the goveremt tell them how it is. Get support and go have a little protest or two. Heck if you are really mad start a riot. Civil liberties exist for a reason. This country is turning into an oligarchy.



You really didn't just include Australia in this picture did you. Welcome to the true land of capped Internet


$40 gets you 400MB [yes megabytes] total download 

Broadband Internet Plans - Telstra BigPond


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## jicon (Jan 12, 2005)

Alright, I have to say a few things on this topic:

I was effectively an Internet Traffic Cop for Shaw nine years ago. I was paid to shut down the "abusers".

At that time, most cable companies were partnered with @Home to provide content and email addresses to users. $10 per subscriber was paid to @Home per month by the cable companies.

The TOS never specifically mentioned a specific "cap" on download/upload traffic per month, but our guideline for enforcement was 5GB down, 1GB up.

Our city had many thousands of subscribers... and we could handle a significant amount of traffic. A "Gateway" in a region controlled two link routers, each capable of supporting 1000 modems, provided the cable had little noise on the transmission frequencies. Cable systems being what they are, continually degrading, affected by heat, cold, wind, etc, were always in need of maintenance. Though our brand of modem worked better over the Motorola brand in noisier cable systems, we'd only load a thousand subscribers per Gateway (50% load) - The equipment has long since been replaced now, so I'm uncertain what the dynamics are.

One nasty side effect of having subscribers connected this way however, is that those who continually uploaded a lot of data essentially could have the neighborhood slow to a crawl. The cablesystem was slowly becoming a bidirectional communication channel, but not all amplifiers were effectively built to get return signal back to the head office. It was not possible to raise the upload speeds of the routers due to the return noise signal. Therefore if you were sharing files, running a website, mail server. Kazaa, etc, it could potentially cause a bottleneck.

We also needed to rent the fiber to connect to the rest of the internet. Many thousands of subscribers were run on a T3 (originally four fractal T1s) connection back then. There becomes a need at some point to control the usage. Sure, we could support everyone if they downloaded 5GB a month, but it was the abusers ruining the party for everyone else.

So what constituted an abuser?

I'd end up running reports on the routers every few weeks to monitor traffic. Most often, most back then were lucky to download a gigabyte. However, consistently on every router, there was one or two over the 5GB cap at a tune of 200-300GB, usually also uploading at least 100GB a month.

So, I'd find their IP address, do some sniffing around to see what services were running, and it always came back to someone sharing video files, warez, or a website dedicated to a cartoon of some kind with every sort of massive download available.

In fact, one prominent public broadcasting engineer had Realvideo files shared from his home machine, linked off the main corporate news site. A lot of unhappy people in the neighborhood. 

It must seriously be a large burden on the providers these days, so much video available on the web, and many torrent clients by default set to upload a significant amount of bandwidth.

Anyway, sure, Rogers' initiative will make them a small bit of profit, but it will be offset by those leaving the service. This doesn't sound like a money grab, I think it is just a reminder that users should be conscious of how much traffic they are utilizing.

If you are using more than 60GB a month, a consumer cable service is not your best option. Consult 360 Networks or Bell to install a T1 line instead.


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## ApplePie (Feb 28, 2007)

mguertin said:


> I'd have to agree that I would balk a LOT less if they introduced a tiered pricing format for bandwidth usage instead of a one-size-fits-all cap on things. "Heavy" users (in their terms "abusers") would have to pay more according to the amount of bandwidth they require and would at least have an idea how much their monthly bills would be.
> 
> I'd love to see a wholesale approach to bandwith from someone. You pay $____ for your monthly connection with ___GB of bandwidth, and then buy blocks of ___GB for $____/mnth. No filtering of content, no throttling of protocols, no "web space" or email addresses, just an IP address (or block if you prefer) and some bandwidth. It might be more than the average consumer wants to deal with, but for the "power users" it would be delightful.


Teksavvy is a wholesaler. You pay *$29.95* for your monthly connection with *200*GB of bandwidth, and then buy blocks of *100*GB for *$10.00*/mnth. The rest of what you were looking for conformed as well.

Even a fair approach like that isn't acceptable to Bell though. They need to throttle wholesalers because they will make more if they do or not have to spend as much if they don't. Rogers and Bell will take what they can, no matter how clear the deal, because they know half of the people will just say I don't use that or stop your bitching. The above approach you mentioned is fair, reasonable and straightforward, but you are too ahead of your time in your thinking.

Don't worry Rogers and Bell loves you... (most will stop reading here) ...r money!


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## G-Mo (Sep 26, 2007)

mguertin said:


> Also, just because I'm connected to a VPN don't ASSume that it's for business purposes. This leads back to the problem with the ISPs right now, in that they ASSume if you download via torrents you're downloading illegal content and that you should be treated accordingly, and they also ASSume that more than 60G per month is abusing the "unlimited high-speed" account they are selling us all.


For the record, my suggestion that you were using your connection for business uses stems completely from your own statement about moving large files with co-workers, and had nothing to do with VPN:



mguertin said:


> I regularly transfer large video projects with co-workers


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## mikelc2 (Mar 3, 2008)

G-Mo said:


> If you look at the terms of your original service you will discover there was always a cap!! Rogers has never had "unlimited" internet service for the home market no matter how they advertised it (it always had a cap in the T&Cs)... To date they have never enforced you exceeding it, now they are... in fact, you are NOW getting exactly what you signed up for, whereas previously, they were letting you, mostly, get away with whatever you wanted...



MY question is, why would they call it unlimited if it is NOT UNLIMITED. That is very poor business practice, and sadly rogers is the main provider that does this. At least Bell and Telus proactively display the bandwidth cap you are going to be receiving. 

And honestly, the way the internet is going a bandwidth cap is only going to cause problems. There is more downloading and streaming then ever. I want to watch an HD movie on the TV. That's 5 GB to download.. 

Lets face it, unless your an single couple with practically no use for the internet other then random browsing and checking email, it's time for a reality check There is a reason bandwidth is getting cheaper, what rogers is doing is ridiculous I'm so happy here in Saskatchewan, Sasktel still offers true unlimited bandwidth.


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

harzack86 said:


> taco taco, did you check this site:
> 
> Canadian ISP - Find an Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Canada




well, im gonna check out teksavvy and primus. 

im also still open to other places, but this link didnt really help much. i filtered the list down to everything that serves toronto, and there were lots of places that didnt serve this area, but were from elsewhere in ontario, and it didnt like some places i know exist....


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## Guest (Mar 28, 2008)

G-Mo said:


> For the record, my suggestion that you were using your connection for business uses stems completely from your own statement about moving large files with co-workers, and had nothing to do with VPN:


Fair enough, but as I said in a previous post I have NO options available from Rogers that put me into a business class connection. Also just for the sake of completeness those video transfers account for a small portion of my bandwidth usage ...

As for Teksavvy being a wholesaler the person who posted that is correct, and that's why I'm going to go with their service. It's a shame that Bell is moving towards throttling and otherwise mucking with the bandwidth they are selling to these companies :/ ... but I'll leave that in the capable hands of the folks at Teksavvy to duke it out with them. In the end there's not really anything us "end users" can do about it anyway. All the bitching and complaining we do about throttling at that level falls on deaf ears (if it finds any ears at all).


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## boxlight (Mar 20, 2008)

taco taco burrito said:


> there is no good reason to assume any of the downloading is illegal. but i guess thats a whole other thread too...


a. come on, it's us 

b. rogers doesn't care if your downloaded content is illegal, they only care if you're eating up so much bandwidth that it's hurting their network and their ability to provide good service to the other users in your area; also, they are always looking for a new way to ding your for a couple more bucks a month, and they *always* get those extra couple bucks, every time


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## boxlight (Mar 20, 2008)

guytoronto said:


> I've had Rogers Internet for almost 5 years. I doubt they'll appreciate me packing up and leaving.


a. they won't care

b. they will offer you a better deal than you have now to come back after you've gone and/or signed up with someone else


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

k, i was checking out this link:

TekSavvy Solutions Inc

so they do have an unlimited account if you want it. 

but what i wanted to ask, is whats the advantage of having a static ip?

im pretty sure that means your ip address just stays the same? as opposed to a dynamic ip which comes from the isp whenever you reset the modem? am i close?


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## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

The static IP address, I believe, provides you with the following:

From your machine you can set up a web site and serve web pages.
With TekSavvy I believe you can access news groups (something I have never done so I don't really understand it.)

There maybe other neat things that can be done with a static IP compared to a dynamic address. 

A dynamic address will probably change every time you reset your modem or hub/router. Meaning that a Domain Name Server which maps to IP numbers to URL's will not be able to find your machine again until the IP/Domain Name data is re-entered. Hence you have to register you URL (Domain Name) and get a IP number that is entered into your machine when you set it up.


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## guytoronto (Jun 25, 2005)

The big thing with with the static IP is being able to easily have access to your computer from anywhere in the world.

There are solutions for people with dynamic IPs who want to access their home computer (http://www.dyndns.com/), but a static IP is more elegant.


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## ericlewis91 (Jul 12, 2007)

last month i was at 106gb

crap


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

jicon said:


> Alright, I have to say a few things on this topic:
> 
> I was effectively an Internet Traffic Cop for Shaw nine years ago. I was paid to shut down the "abusers".
> 
> ...


Very well presented and explained. Thank you.


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## absolutetotalgeek (Sep 18, 2005)

> ....it seems a lot don't have a clue how it works or what's involved when you click on a link.


I think that just about sums it all up. :lmao:


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## boxlight (Mar 20, 2008)

taco taco burrito said:


> but what i wanted to ask, is whats the advantage of having a static ip?


The value of a static ip you can host your own applications like web apps.  Since your IP address doesn't change, you can register it reliably with DNS servers.

You can also do things like VPN, VNC or Remote Desktop into your home computer from anywhere on the internet if you know your computers IP address -- and it's easier to know what it is if it's static and never changing.


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## 5andman (Oct 15, 2006)

5andman said:


> Digital Home Canada - Rogers High Speed introduces new fee structure
> 
> I don't see it on my bill.
> Is this just for people who live in houses?
> (I live in a condo)


Eh.... spoke to soon. BASTARDS!
Just got the notice ... looks like I peak under 50gb (allowance is 60gb)

.. so I'm good.

*But still, nice how they say "based on your pattern you can be billed additional ... blah blah"*


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

ericlewis:

Wow. 106GB in a month?

What else is there to say -- get a girlfriend already! 

(I'm joking, but seriously -- some of your computing habits are going to have to change or your bill is going to skyrocket.)

In other news, I note that Comcast (which apparently some Canadians can get?) has rethought the situation:
Comcast changes tune, won't block large files


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## i-rui (Sep 13, 2006)

Right now i have Rogers as my ISP and Primus Talk Broadband as my phoneline.

If i switched to Teksavvy i'd need to get a Bell phoneline correct?

The situation really is silly. There is no way around the equation, if you want internet or phone services you MUST go to either Rogers or Bell....and both those companies (which are absolute cash cows) know this and are more than happy to screw over their customers because there is no other options.


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## John Clay (Jun 25, 2006)

i-rui said:


> Right now i have Rogers as my ISP and Primus Talk Broadband as my phoneline.
> 
> If i switched to Teksavvy i'd need to get a Bell phoneline correct?
> 
> The situation really is silly. There is no way around the equation, if you want internet or phone services you MUST go to either Rogers or Bell....and both those companies (which are absolute cash cows) know this and are more than happy to screw over their customers because there is no other options.


If you switched to TekSavvy, you can get dry-loop DSL. You have to pay an additional band fee per month, around $9-10, if I recall.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

You can always get a "naked" DSL line and use a cell phone as your phone service. A lot of people I know have done that - trouble is that in a real wide spread emergency, the cell phone network can't handle the traffic.


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

krs said:


> You can always get a "naked" DSL line and use a cell phone as your phone service. A lot of people I know have done that - trouble is that in a real wide spread emergency, the cell phone network can't handle the traffic.


And when the power goes down, the generators in the cell towers fail after a period of time... although in that August blackout in Toronto a few years ago, I had cell service (with Rogers) during the entire 14 hours it hit where I lived.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

Speaking of power going down, is anybody turning their power off tonight between 8 and 9 pm? It's Earth Hour day, you know.


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## garf1108 (May 30, 2006)

I am


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## harzack86 (Jan 30, 2005)

fjnmusic said:


> Speaking of power going down, is anybody turning their power off tonight between 8 and 9 pm? It's Earth Hour day, you know.


Doing it too


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

I'll have everything off except for my battery powered 5" TV.


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## WorldIRC (Mar 7, 2004)

I'll have everything off except my battery powered 17" Macbook Pro...of which I'll just recharge after the hour is over.....


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## dhalver_xeno (Oct 11, 2007)

ender78 said:


> You really didn't just include Australia in this picture did you. Welcome to the true land of capped Internet
> 
> 
> $40 gets you 400MB [yes megabytes] total download


I live half the year in Australia and have Big Pond. We pay A$149.95 a month for the fastest service they have with a 60GB cap. They also bill you quarterly ... meaning you get a bill every 3 months. We just got a bill from them... Apparently we were over by 10GB one month, 50GB another month, and 20GB the next month. Total bill... A$12,295. Yes. I kid you not. 15 cents per megabyte over the cap. What's more of a scam is that while other Big Pond plans allow you to default to 56k when you reach your cap for the month, our plan doesn't allow this and they don't notify you that you are over your cap until you get your bill. Just to put it into perspective, downloading a 300MB movie after the cap ends up costing A$45.

We haven't paid it yet...We are in "negotiations" with them about how much we will actually be paying...


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

dhalver_xeno said:


> I live half the year in Australia and have Big Pond. We pay A$149.95 a month for the fastest service they have with a 60GB cap. They also bill you quarterly ... meaning you get a bill every 3 months. We just got a bill from them... Apparently we were over by 10GB one month, 50GB another month, and 20GB the next month. Total bill... A$12,295. Yes. I kid you not. 15 cents per megabyte over the cap. What's more of a scam is that while other Big Pond plans allow you to default to 56k when you reach your cap for the month, our plan doesn't allow this and they don't notify you that you are over your cap until you get your bill. Just to put it into perspective, downloading a 300MB movie after the cap ends up costing A$45.
> 
> We haven't paid it yet...We are in "negotiations" with them about how much we will actually be paying...



hey they must be owned by rogers. lol jk. holy ****.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

Well, maybe that's why Rogers got rid of late fees. They were looking forward and realized that they could make a LOT more money with over-use fees. :greedy:


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## guytoronto (Jun 25, 2005)

I sent Rogers an e-mail regarding all of this, and this is their response:



guytoronto's original email said:


> I've been a long time Rogers customer. I just received a notice in the mail regarding a data transfer cap of 60GB effective June. My original contract I signed with Rogers had no such cap.
> 
> I know, you guys can change the terms of the agreement whenever you want. Here's the thing. I use more. And this cap isn't acceptable to me.
> 
> ...


Roger's Response:



> Dear [guytoronto],
> 
> 
> Thank you for taking the time to write to us, we appreciate your use of online customer service.
> ...


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## Ottawaman (Jan 16, 2005)

> Rogers Communications Inc. is gearing up to make Internet use more expensive for consumers who have a penchant for chewing up bandwidth by downloading movies or playing video games online.
> 
> The telecommunications giant already regulates the flow of traffic on its networks by giving priority to certain content; however, the changes are part of a blueprint to introduce tiered Internet service plans in June that will not only charge users for a designated connection speed, but also cap how much bandwidth they can use in a month.
> 
> ...


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...echnology/home[


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## iJohnHenry (Mar 29, 2008)

Roger's would like to eliminate all possibility of customers getting their entertainment over the Internet, as opposed to their cable services, unless they get compensation equivalent to those services.

I call this a conflict of interest, but I'm sure the CRTC would not see it that way.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

guytoronto said:


> I sent Rogers an e-mail regarding all of this, and this is their response:
> 
> 
> 
> Roger's Response:


So what have you decided to do, Guy? How much would the extra usage cost? Is it more worthwhile to switch, considering the $200 penalty? Were the customer service representatives really "more than happy" to talk to you? Don't you wonder about someone who is "more than happy"? Isn't that a synonym for "insane"? Just wondering.


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## boxlight (Mar 20, 2008)

The thing that bothers me about this bandwidth cap they're imposing is not how it affects me now, it's how it will affect me in the future.

Rogers is being very strategic and forward-thinking with this cap. 

I just bought an Apple TV and am now capable of downloading HD movies from iTunes. Okay, so a couple movies a month is still not going to push me past 60Gigs a month. But what happens when YouTube eventually goes HD? And whatever the next big thing is comes along and requires more bandwidth? 

In short, I won't hit 60Gigs today, but in a couple years 100s of Gigs might very well be the norm for even average users when we start doing things on the net that we have not even thought of yet.

Like I said, right now it won't hurt, but Rogers is setting themselves up to be able to rake it tonnes more cash from future bandwidth-heavy internet applications.

Does it really say in my contract with Rogers that they can change the terms of the deal like this whenever they want? Hell, if that's the case, why don't they start charging me per email sent, or per web page visited.


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

guytoronto said:


> I sent Rogers an e-mail regarding all of this, and this is their response:
> 
> 
> 
> Roger's Response:




in other words, **** you, in your face.

well, anyways, if you want consideration, you probably have to call them and talk to a rep rather than send an email. i just think you can get farther that way if its really what you wanna do. but if you are just gonna bail on them anyways, then who cares. i will probably keep my cell with rogers until the contract expires but as my isp, they will be done before june...


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

boxlight said:


> Okay, so a couple movies a month is still not going to push me past 60Gigs a month.


However, the limit will kick in with about 14 movies, if they are not compressed and are of DVD style quality. If a person was to watch a movie on Friday night, and another on Saturday, that would be 8-10 movies, so most of the cap is gone. Throw in a few TV shows and the like, and you can eaily go over.

Of course, they do have the right to cap accounts if they do it without breaking the terms of their contract - but their should be some mechanism for warning when an account is coming up to a limit, and perhaps if someone is down to their final GB for the month, the connection should throttle back so even if you haven't happened to read the email or whatever, you would get the hint. And I think that they play an unethical game - what they provide is not what they are showing on their advertisements. I do not think they should advertise their service as being "high speed" when they throttle traffic back so that it is no better than regular speed; at least without throttling back the price.



> And whatever the next big thing is comes along and requires more bandwidth?


What happens when Vista security updates go over the 1GB mark??? Well, maybe Vista can't handle such things, but I am sure that the Evil Empire is plotting just that for Windows 7even!



> Does it really say in my contract with Rogers that they can change the terms of the deal like this whenever they want?


At one time, they could not arbitrarily change contracts, unless they obtained approval from the government, or they were ordered to do so by the courts. Of course, the Internet does not come under government scrutiny - but the cables that link their servers to the user are covered under broadcasting regulations. But the government has backpeddled from their policies, and moreand more users will be handed notice of "Unregulated Terms Of Service". In the notice I obtained, Bell has promised me, and I shall paraphrase: "great excitement beyond all of my dreams!" because "under UTOS, we wil be able to offer our customers great new packages".

So yes, once your area becomes UTOS, you will be stiffed by the "providers" because they are no longer regulated. Your only option is to leave their service, which can be nasty because the government has saw fit to grant UTOS without allowing for competing companies to get into the ring.



> Hell, if that's the case, why don't they start charging me per email sent, or per web page visited.


This is not so far from the truth. Years ago, Micro$haft floated this very idea in a project that they called "Ali Baba". Something like Office would be entirely free - but you would pay by the page (and perhaps even by the time spent editing). It hinged upon the whole concept of high speed Internet connections because the user would not actually have the program on their computer - it would be downloaded on a per use basis. However, it was found to be entirely illegal during their anti-trust suit, and Ali Baba died a rather quick death. Windows users are still shafted by it, because Ali Baba is the reason why Windows has a "registry", which was created to turn the software on and off. Google has kind of done the same thing with their Documents project, except that it is free for use and is not proprietary to a single OS.

So yes, it is possible that at some point, Internet could be billed in such a way, just like the CRP charged on the use of various networks in the days of FidoNet (and the way that some ArpaNET systems that were not on the backbone billed for passing mail in either direction).


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## ericlewis91 (Jul 12, 2007)

its so not hard hitting 60gb

a 360 playing halo online? + 15-20HD movies of Apple TV + bit torrent (legal stuff)
4 people using internet all the time?

when i signed up..there was no cap..they cant just add one? can they?


my sister at University of Waterloo has a 30gb cap? thats huge for a university student? while at home a have 60gb?

can we sue rogers?


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## zenith (Sep 22, 2007)

ericlewis91 said:


> when i signed up..there was no cap..they cant just add one? can they?


LOL That's cute.

Rogers, like Bell, Shaw, and the others can do whatever in the hell they want. They consider themselves to be omnipotent, and in the past have proven themselves to be just that. Ah, the luxury of being accountable to nothing and to no one!


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## boxlight (Mar 20, 2008)

EvanPitts said:


> but their should be some mechanism for warning when an account is coming up to a limit


FYI, you can log in at rogers.com and tell it to send you an email warning when you hit 75% of your cap.


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## G-Mo (Sep 26, 2007)

ericlewis91 said:


> when i signed up..there was no cap..they cant just add one? can they?


Rogers has always had a cap, although not published as a printed number and not enforced unless there were bandwidth usage issues in your area, the T&C of their service has always allowed them impose limits and regulate the amount of bandwidth users used -- now they are simply putting it up front and leveling the playing field for everyone and charging for the over usage (which could be considered nicer than their previous policy, which cut off your service for 7 days)... You could always go Extreme for $55/month and get 95GB/month usage allowance??!


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## boxlight (Mar 20, 2008)

G-Mo said:


> You could always go Extreme for $55/month and get 95GB/month usage allowance??!


Was just talking with a guy at Rogers and learned something new. My cap is 60Gig, and there's a $2 fee for each additional 1Gig, but interestingly the extra fees go to a maximum of $25.

That is, I'm paying whatever I'm paying, say $45/month, and that gets me 60Gig. If I go to 12 or 13 Gigs higher than that, I get charged $25 more dollars, but after that it's unlimited.

So the guy who goes 73 Gigs, pays the same every month as the guy who goes 373 Gigs. 

Weird, eh?


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## i-rui (Sep 13, 2006)

Ottawaman said:


> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...echnology/home[


great article. I really hope there is some grassroots movement to get the government involved (or out of bed) with these 2 monopolies.

If anyone sees any online petitions please post them in this thread. Maybe we should all write our local MPs (although i've never done that and am skeptical as to it's effectiveness).


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## ericlewis91 (Jul 12, 2007)

so basically its 25 more bucks and then it works out unlimitted? correct?


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

boxlight said:


> Was just talking with a guy at Rogers and learned something new. My cap is 60Gig, and there's a $2 fee for each additional 1Gig, but interestingly the extra fees go to a maximum of $25.
> 
> That is, I'm paying whatever I'm paying, say $45/month, and that gets me 60Gig. If I go to 12 or 13 Gigs higher than that, I get charged $25 more dollars, but after that it's unlimited.
> 
> ...


Link?

If that isn't in writing, it doesn't exist. Some guy at Rogers said something is not the basis for a binding, legal contract. Emptor persolvo.


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## xorpion (Jul 26, 2002)

HowEver said:


> Link?
> 
> If that isn't in writing, it doesn't exist. Some guy at Rogers said something is not the basis for a binding, legal contract. Emptor persolvo.


The $25 max was mentioned in the notice they sent.


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## Kosh (May 27, 2002)

xorpion said:


> The $25 max was mentioned in the notice they sent.


Yes, I can confirm, too, that's in the notice. You get charged up to a max of $25. 

I have to read the notice again, as I don't remember if it really says what happens if we go over $25.

As Taco said, it's a cash grab, pure and simple.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

I'd think people would now try to use well over the max limit so they can get their twenty-five dollars worth. Yeah, that will really help ease the congestion.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

fjnmusic said:


> I'd think people would now try to use well over the max limit so they can get their twenty-five dollars worth. Yeah, that will really help ease the congestion.


I wouldn't be surprised if they just cut you off once you go over the $25 extra - "abuse of the service".

Anyone remember the unlimited long distance out West where some guy and his girlfriend were living apart but they just called each other once and then left the connection up permanently on hands-free so they at least felt they were together.


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## wcg (Oct 13, 2007)

I know I'm late to the party but I've been aware of the caps for a few years now. In fact, I had them when with Bell before that. I was actually charged some money with Bell IIRC. With Rogers I've monitored my usage here and there and come close to the cap a few times but never over.

This is not news, neither is the traffic shaping. 

Having said all that, I would pay more for serious reliable bandwidth, even up to $100/month or so. In case any market research people are listening. By serious I mean real 10 Mb/s in both directions, no caps, no traffic shaping.


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## Ottawaman (Jan 16, 2005)

ericlewis91 said:


> so basically its 25 more bucks and then it works out unlimitted? correct?


The 25 dollar amount most likely will change over time.
These new penalties are probably low(if you want to call it that), so as to not cause "sticker shock". 
They always creep up.


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## Kosh (May 27, 2002)

Hmmmm... it doesn't REALLY say what happens if you go over $25, other than they won't charge you over $25. It just says "you'll be charged $x per GB, until you reach $25." They also mention a few times that there is tracking tools and you'll be warned when you're reaching the limit.

Rogers High-Speed Internet | Understanding Your Bill


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## Kosh (May 27, 2002)

Ottawaman said:


> They always creep up.


With Rogers, they're guaranteed to "creep" up.


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## Elemenopee (Apr 20, 2004)

ericlewis91 said:


> so basically its 25 more bucks and then it works out unlimitted? correct?


At that point, Rogers will probably throttle back your service to something ridiculous like 128 kbps download speed.


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

Kosh said:


> Hmmmm... it doesn't REALLY say what happens if you go over $25, other than they won't charge you over $25. It just says "you'll be charged $x per GB, until you reach $25." They also mention a few times that there is tracking tools and you'll be warned when you're reaching the limit.
> 
> Rogers High-Speed Internet | Understanding Your Bill




thats so funny, cause the last thing rogers wants is for people to actually understand their bills... of course it also makes sense, cause you would need a whole freakin document just to understand it...


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## pictor (Jan 29, 2007)

love it or hate it, the express is only $10 more, gives you a 95 GB limit, cheaper overuse charge ($1.50 a GB I think), and almost 50% speed boost.

I am not crazy about the limit...but I also loathe the idea of giving bell money, even via a reseller, and I'd need a dry loop for any other service anyways.

I may just pay the $10 more. My usage last month was 68-70 GB, we'll see what the next 2 months show as my use, but it's something I may need to do. Between online games, movies, iTunes, etc... I do use a lot of bandwidth.

edit: may I add....I have none of the hatred for rogers most people do. I have never had such good, friendly, and professional customer service with any other company....ever.....in my life.


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## RC51Pilot (Mar 26, 2004)

pictor said:


> edit: may I add....I have none of the hatred for rogers most people do. I have never had such good, friendly, and professional customer service with any other company....ever.....in my life.


Ditto


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## xorpion (Jul 26, 2002)

pictor said:


> I may just pay the $10 more.


exactly what Rogers wants you to do.


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## Kosh (May 27, 2002)

pictor said:


> love it or hate it, the express is only $10 more, gives you a 95 GB limit, cheaper overuse charge ($1.50 a GB I think), and almost 50% speed boost.


Technically it's not a speed boost, a speed boost would improve your ping or round-trip time (I'm a gamer, ping is important to me), it's a bandwidth boost, which does improve speed on a few things, like downloads.


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## i-rui (Sep 13, 2006)

Kosh said:


> Technically it's not a speed boost, a speed boost would improve your ping or round-trip time (I'm a gamer, ping is important to me), it's a bandwidth boost, which does improve speed on a few things, like downloads.


Isn't it also a speed boost? The Express package is 7Mbps DL/ 512 Kbps UP while the Extreme package gives you 10Mbps DL/ 1 Mbps UL

Atleast that's what the letter said (not that we'll ever get those speeds constantly)


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

well whatever. here is what i have found out so far:

rogers $45/month 60gb cap
$2/gb over 60

tekksavvy $30/month 200gb cap
or $40/month for unlimited
and if you go over, its 25¢ per gb.

TekSavvy Solutions Inc

primus $35/month unlimited

Primus Canada - For Your Home

so i guess its not a direct fair comparison, because its dsl vs. cable but rogers does cost more and especially the cost per gb if you go over... insane!


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## pictor (Jan 29, 2007)

TekSavvy is slower, and at least in my case, costs $10 more as I would need to buy a dry loop.


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## nick24 (Jul 11, 2006)

I've been reading this thread with interest, as I too have Rogers as my internet provider (Express flavour), and am particularly drawn to those who speak about 'only' having 60GB cap a month and how this may not be large enough in the future.

As others have said, 60GB is a lot of data for normal use. Think about it this way - that's 12 movies (rounding up a 4.7GB DVD to 5GB) plus room for music. Of course, we're not into downloading such material, so that's a bad comparison...! If - I mean when - Apple is finally able to get movie rentals to Canada, at 720p resolution and compression, that's going to mean even more movies that we can download within the 60GB cap.

With regards to future use, yes, I agree, 60GB now may seem to be a lot, but in the future, 60GB may equate to a tiny amount of bandwidth. I know we are talking Rogers here, but I'd like to think that they will move with the times and increase the cap as data downloads increase. Case in point, $45 a month used to buy you a 5Mbps limit, now you get 7Mbps.

Don't get me wrong here, I am not trying to defend Rogers - or any other ISP - which restricts what users use their bandwidth for, but instead, I am trying to point out that 60GB is quite a large cap, and ISPs need to put a stake in the ground at some point, and use this as the yardstick to move forward. Not back!


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

It seems that people are complaining more about the capping of downloads, rather than the throtting of speeds. For myself, the download cap is fairly generous for regular computer use, but somewhat restricive for watching TV Shows and Movies. It would be less of a "problem" if their advertising did not feature these very functions! It is something that they do push in their advertising - and if they advertise it, they had better follow through. If they really do not have the bandwidth to fulfill what they advertise, then it is false advertising and they should in fact, recant, and hand back rebates to those who had made the choice of using their services based on the falsehoods peddled in their advertisements.

I think the bigger problem in this regard is the throttling of speeds. Again, they advertise that their service is "High Speed", and perhaps their should be some criteria as to exactly what "High Speed" is. They throttle encrypted traffic, which not only covers that of pirated torrents, but that of entirely legitimate file transfers, be it encrypted links to bank or commercial web sites, or of legitimate torrents transfered by the major broadcasters like the CBC, NBC and Universal. It will not be long until "streaming video" will cease to be practical, in light of the expected brownouts in the Internet; and torrents, or torrent like transfers, will predominate. And if they throttle such services, or force people to lock down thrie transfers to 5kB/s, then they are no longer "high speed", and thus, they are peddling false advertisements.

I think the other problem that makes them look bad is that they have "attractive" pricing to get people to sign up; then once the contract it up, they not only crank up the rates, but they reduce the service. That means, as consumers, we must be prepared to make changes. We have been used to a regime of regulated pricing and terms of service - this is no more, and under Unregulated Terms Of Service, we can and should expect the companies to engage in a myriad of unilateral practices that will not be of any benefit to customers.

There is always a notion that somehow "smaller providers" can not give superior service; and if that was true, then GM would be building the world's most excellent automobile, while Rolls Royce / Bentley would be building cheap junk that you wouldn't want to be caught riding in. I, for one, think that large companies become quite byzantine, and as such, you end up with these unsolvable prolems. And if you want an example of byzantine, give 310-BELL a call, and you will find that it is pretty easy to find out what the weather is across Canada, as they hand you off to different departments and different extentions in different cities.

And it is so bad that on yesterday's Cogego junk mail flyer that we received in the mail box, the "fine print" took up half of the last page, and one would pretty much have to be a highly experienced lawyer to figure out what all of the terms actually mean.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

Seems to me Bill Gates was once quoted as saying, who needs more than 128K?


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

fjnmusic said:


> Seems to me Bill Gates was once quoted as saying, who needs more than 128K?


It was 640K, the standard DOS limit (without software memory "drivers"). However, I'm not sure if that's an urban myth or not.

Regardless, The 60GB limit is for today and the near future, not a permanent cap forever.


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## Kosh (May 27, 2002)

i-rui said:


> Isn't it also a speed boost? The Express package is 7Mbps DL/ 512 Kbps UP while the Extreme package gives you 10Mbps DL/ 1 Mbps UL
> 
> Atleast that's what the letter said (not that we'll ever get those speeds constantly)


 
There are 2 measures of speed for internet access really. Bandwidth and round-trip time. If you use the analogy of water pipes - bandwidth is the width of the pipe, round-trip (ping) time is the speed or pressure that the water is flowing through those pipes. So bandwidth is how wide your access is to the internet and round-trip (ping) time is how fast data takes to get from the source on the internet to you. ISPs probably can't do much about round-trip time since it's dependent on things beyond the control of that ISP. 

I was just being a technical geek picky person.

Once you get a certain download speed, you really sometimes don't care for anything more as for certain things it doesn't help. Take for example gaming, it doesn't help any more that I have a download of 7Mbps or 10Mbps. 

As well, if I'm downloading large files from Bittorrent, like a Muppets Show ( I love the old Muppet Show), I'll just leave my computer on while it downloads it and do something else. I don't really need 10Mbps.

By the way, I get a kick out of Rogers FAQ mentioning that you should turn off peer-to-peer applications when you stop downloading as they may still be uploading. Ummm.... that doesn't affect download caps.


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## Kosh (May 27, 2002)

hayesk said:


> It was 640K, the standard DOS limit (without software memory "drivers"). However, I'm not sure if that's an urban myth or not.
> 
> Regardless, The 60GB limit is for today and the near future, not a permanent cap forever.


 
Yeah, but they're going to charge you when they increase it, saying it's an improvement to the service... cough cough... CASH GRAB.beejacon

And no the 640K was not an urban myth. Windows had to code around that limit in later versions. Good ole' Bill said 640K was enough for any app.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

Kosh said:


> By the way, I get a kick out of Rogers FAQ mentioning that you should turn off peer-to-peer applications when you stop downloading as they may still be uploading. Ummm.... that doesn't affect download caps.


Is Rogers really only talking about a download cap?
My little ISP in Kingston has a total data transfer cap, downloads and uploads.


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## harzack86 (Jan 30, 2005)

krs said:


> Is Rogers really only talking about a download cap?
> My little ISP in Kingston has a total data transfer cap, downloads and uploads.


Rogers' cap is for total data transfer, download and upload.
Just like you pay when you call or someone calls you on your cell...


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

krs said:


> Is Rogers really only talking about a download cap?
> My little ISP in Kingston has a total data transfer cap, downloads and uploads.


This applies to almost all (or all) ISP's. It's total bandwidth used, not just download bandwidth.


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## Kosh (May 27, 2002)

harzack86 said:


> Rogers' cap is for total data transfer, download and upload.
> Just like you pay when you call or someone calls you on your cell...


Damn, you're right! Didn't realize that, it says a usage cap including traffic TO and FROM the modem. Those buggers! So when I'm downloading my Muppets Show from BitTorrent, that's the download usage and upload usage that I get charged. Hmmmmm...


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

Kosh said:


> Damn, you're right! Didn't realize that, it says a usage cap including traffic TO and FROM the modem. Those buggers! So when I'm downloading my Muppets Show from BitTorrent, that's the download usage and upload usage that I get charged. Hmmmmm...


Don't you think that makes sense?

With the original traditional internet service it didn't make much difference if one measured uploads from a residential account because that traffic was only a fraction of the download traffic.
Thus the concept of ADSL where "A" stands for "Asynchronous" - ie upload speeds much much lower than download speeds. This is also the concept of satellite internet where the download traffic is via the satellite link but the upload via a regular dial-up modem.
But when BitTorrents arrived on the scene, that whole scenario changed because of bittorrent and p2p traffic.
CBC somewhat sneakily takes advantage of that by starting to distribute their programs via bit torents. So instead CBC paying for the bandwidth of thousands of 
downloads of their program from their site, they now basically get the internet community to pay for that and they laugh all the way to the bank.


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

Kosh said:


> And no the 640K was not an urban myth. Windows had to code around that limit in later versions. Good ole' Bill said 640K was enough for any app.


I didn't say the 640K limit was an urban myth. I've been working with computers for more than 20 years, so yes, I am well aware of it.

What I'm saying is an urban myth is Bill Gates saying "640K ought to be enough for anybody." I see lots of people saying he said that, but no definitive evidence of it.

Just like people who complain when Steve Jobs promised iTools (now .Mac) would be free for life. He never said that, yet people swear up and down that he did.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

OK.

Misattributed

Life is not fair. Get used to it. .... Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Though widely attributed to Gates on the internet, this list of life suggestions is actually based on one from Charles J. Sykes. More information at Snopes.com

*640K ought to be enough for anybody.*

Often attributed to Gates in 1981. Gates considered the IBM PC's 640kB program memory a significant breakthrough over 8-bit systems that were typically limited to 64kB, but he has denied making this remark.[3] Also see the 1989 and 1993 remarks above.

I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time... I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again.

Bloomberg Business News (19 January 1996); also WIRED (16 January 1997)
Do you realize the pain the industry went through while the IBM PC was limited to 640K? The machine was going to be 512K at one point, and we kept pushing it up. I never said that statement — I said the opposite of that.
U.S. News & World Report (20 August 2001)


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

fjnmusic said:


> *640K ought to be enough for anybody.*
> 
> Often attributed to Gates in 1981. Gates considered the IBM PC's 640kB program memory a significant breakthrough over 8-bit systems that were typically limited to 64kB, but he has denied making this remark.


We'll never know if he said that or not.

It's just a bit odd that Bill Gates waited 15 years before he denied it - unless of course the 1981 is a mile off.


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

well i just hit 60 gb for this month. surprising. i just went to this link:

Toronto, Ontario - Forecast - Environment Canada

to check the weather, and the top half of the window was a rogers message saying i hit 100% of my 60 gb for this month. i dont know how, but i guess it must be true... slightly obtrusive way of letting me know... anyways, i guess i have to make the move soon... i have until june...


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

taco taco burrito said:


> well i just hit 60 gb for this month. surprising. i just went to this link:


I hope your billing cycle is not from the first to the first


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## Guest (Apr 5, 2008)

taco taco burrito said:


> well i just hit 60 gb for this month. surprising. i just went to this link:
> 
> Toronto, Ontario - Forecast - Environment Canada
> 
> to check the weather, and the top half of the window was a rogers message saying i hit 100% of my 60 gb for this month. i dont know how, but i guess it must be true... slightly obtrusive way of letting me know... anyways, i guess i have to make the move soon... i have until june...


That in itself is a little disturbing ... assuming that you have to be using their cacheing proxy servers for this to work. Pretty "big brother" when you think about it .. they can inject content into any web page you view.

I'm done with Rogers, luckily I'm moving before they are going to start actually charging for overage. I spoke with them on the phone again yesterday and sure enough, if you don't "fully" use Rogers "services" (i.e. if you don't have a Rogers email address) they are unable to notify you about anything. I also don't use their cacheing web proxy, so it sounds like I wouldn't be able to get those kinds of notifications either (not that I want them!)


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

hayesk said:


> I didn't say the 640K limit was an urban myth. I've been working with computers for more than 20 years, so yes, I am well aware of it.


Not that this is really a part of the thread, but just to set the record straight in the matter of the so called "640k limit". In the design of the 8086 processor, Intel wished to extend the addressing of memory from the 60kB limit imposed in the 8-Bit 8080/8085 processors. They did this by created the "Segment Register", which allowed for four extra bits to be added to the front of the address. Hence, the 60kB limit was moved to the 1MB boundary.

However, Intel placed the reset vector table at the "top" of the memory; which was contrary to Motorola who placed it at the bottom. These vectors, for NMI and IRQ lines, are hard coded into the processor and can not (without much finagling) be changed. Hence, the BIOS resides at the top of memory; rather than at the bottom as Apple took advantage with with the Old World and New World bootstraps, and as is current with the EFI system.

IBM also developed the PC with hard coded BASIC in mind (Cartridge BASIC), which was contained on a number of PROM chips. These resided just below the BIOS chip. Also, all memory mapped devices, like video cards and later, NetBIOS, resided within this space. No cards used the space below the 640kB limit, this was the realm of the user memory space.

DOS itself is not inherently limited, and later versions could, and did, take advantage of memory that existed within the "forbidden space". The first solution was that of the paged memory EMS system, which were only limited by the pointer length allowed by the EMS driver. (Some systems even allowed paged addressing up to 64MB).

A similar scheme was also used on Motorola based systems, including the Mac, which allowed paged addressing up to the 2MB line. When memory sized were increased, the 640kB-1MB exclusions became annoying to programmers, who had to resort to so called Dos Extenders. Windows never did code a way out of this either; rather, they took advantage of locking the processor into "Protected Mode". In this mode, the BIOS was ejected from the memory map, or rather, consigned to a "Virtual System" within the Kernel.

The only way out of this problem was for Intel to stop using segmented registers, but that would obsolete all current software of the day, and curiously, would make Intel processors not compatible with their legacy processors. These days, no one really thinks of the 640kB boundary as being a problem - but in Windows, it is still an inherent problem. Any program needs to fit into a "segment" of no more than 640kB, and hence, longer programs are broken into smaller bits, or libraries, and this is why Windoze is plauged by the nuisance of DLL files.

Linux/Unix does used "shared libraries, but for a different reason. They do it to reduce the size of the software, by off loading portions onto libraries that are constant interfaces to hardware. This also allows for software to run across platforms, with consistent behaviours using the libraries compiled on different processors.

This has nothing to do with Rogers, but I hope that people understand such things. As for Rogers... Just as I have stated many times, this whole capping "problem" is less of an actual problem, and more of a case of false and misleading advertizing, as well as a case of a company breaking current contracts with customers in a heavy handed and unilateral manner.

As for "Net Neutrality"... I do not think it is fair to demote the needs of those who use e-mail, forums, those who are downloading software, in order to allow people to use toys like VOIP and streaming video. It comes down to those self evident facts. Phones, TV, and Radio are entirely available by other established means - while email, forums and software downloads can only be done via the Internet. To discriminate is to accent those wasteful tasks when compared to the needs of the majority who just want to check mail or surf some sites. Most of it is smoke.

Rogers has the right to cap downloads, and perhaps even to shape traffic; but they should not, under the circumstances of capping and throttling transfers of data, be advertising that if you subscribe to their services, that you will live in the Arcadia of watching limitless movies and televisions shows, of having "high speed" (as opposed to speeds just barely quicker than a dial up connection), and of having the option of using them, instead of a real phone company with actual phone lines, for telephone communication.


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## taco taco burrito (Jun 6, 2003)

mguertin said:


> That in itself is a little disturbing ... assuming that you have to be using their cacheing proxy servers for this to work. Pretty "big brother" when you think about it .. they can inject content into any web page you view.
> 
> I'm done with Rogers, luckily I'm moving before they are going to start actually charging for overage. I spoke with them on the phone again yesterday and sure enough, if you don't "fully" use Rogers "services" (i.e. if you don't have a Rogers email address) they are unable to notify you about anything. I also don't use their cacheing web proxy, so it sounds like I wouldn't be able to get those kinds of notifications either (not that I want them!)



yes and it appeared on every new window i opened until i hit acknowledge... more than just obtrusive. annoying and they get receipt that i "acknowledge" that i hit 60 gb. ya and i dont know when my billing period is but lol that would be funny if it was the first of the month.

did i mention rogers sucks?


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

EvanPitts said:


> Not that this is really a part of the thread, but just to set the record straight in the matter of the so called "640k limit". In the design of the 8086 processor, Intel wished to extend the addressing of memory from the 60kB limit imposed in the 8-Bit 8080/8085 processors. They did this by created the "Segment Register", which allowed for four extra bits to be added to the front of the address. Hence, the 60kB limit was moved to the 1MB boundary.
> 
> However, Intel placed the reset vector table at the "top" of the memory; which was contrary to Motorola who placed it at the bottom. These vectors, for NMI and IRQ lines, are hard coded into the processor and can not (without much finagling) be changed. Hence, the BIOS resides at the top of memory; rather than at the bottom as Apple took advantage with with the Old World and New World bootstraps, and as is current with the EFI system.
> 
> ...


Good answer, Evan. A little wordy, perhaps, and very serious, but good answer.


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## mojoprofilms (Nov 17, 2002)

60 GB is really not that much if you are a regular .mac user, or update your website using iWeb regularly (where it re-uploads the entire site which in my case is 500MB).

I think if they're going to have a cap to dissuade/profit from "illegal downloaders" then it should certainly be more than 2GB/day.


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## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

I don't have Rogers as my ISP but I still have a question about it.

I have read (In the Guardian newspaper (U.K.) yesterday.) that Rogers customers can't send or receive encrypted traffic? This doesn't sound right. But if it is the case how do you:

Use Revenue Canada's e-file?
Shop on line?

I'd like to hear that the article is wrong.


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

bgw said:


> I don't have Rogers as my ISP but I still have a question about it.
> 
> I have read (In the Guardian newspaper (U.K.) yesterday.) that Rogers customers can't send or receive encrypted traffic? This doesn't sound right. But if it is the case how do you:
> 
> ...


Yet another reason to avoid reading the Guardian. What a rag. Rogers may throttle encryped traffic, but it doesn't "throw it away."

Also, there is a difference between using a website that requires security and the steady flow of encrypted data.


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## corey111 (Jul 9, 2007)

Got my notice in the mail this week, I was away last week.
My previous 2 months i was around 45GB, but last month I downloaded 4 entire seasons of shows from iTunes, and along with my regular usage it went over the limit by 6GB. 
Thats gonna suck when I discover some other shows I wanna catch up on.
Rogers needs to learn that the internet is a new way of getting media...


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## 5andman (Oct 15, 2006)

taco taco burrito said:


> to check the weather, and the top half of the window was a rogers message saying i hit 100% of my 60 gb for this month. i dont know how, but i guess it must be true... slightly obtrusive way of letting me know... anyways, i guess i have to make the move soon... i have until june...


*Geez! Isn't what Rogers doing illegal?! In essence they're monitoring our content and interfering with our freedoms to access of content.*


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

5andman said:


> *Geez! Isn't what Rogers doing illegal?! In essence they're monitoring our content and interfering with our freedoms to access of content.*


What law guarantees you "freedom of access" to content, or anything else for that matter?


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## ajlaff (Apr 10, 2008)

I am sure that if the leagality of what they are doing is challenged it will promptly appear in the initial service agreement that they can basically do what ever they want and we have to sit and spin.

The only way Rogers or Bell will change this policy is if enough customers leave either companyand it affects the bottom line then the caps will disappear and they will pretend like it never happend.

I wait for the day,


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## 5andman (Oct 15, 2006)

HowEver said:


> What law guarantees you "freedom of access" to content, or anything else for that matter?


Digital Home Canada - Digital Home responds to Rogers’ altering Web pages



> How was this any different than the phone company eavesdropping on my phone calls or making me speak to another person through a Rogers interpreter?


I feel that's a valid statement.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

I don't know where this Hugh Thompson from Digital Home is coming from.

First he talks about a "clear violation of "Net Neutrality" - to date I couldn't find any consistent and accepted definition what that even means and even if there were one, it's certainly not the law....

then he talks about Rogers modifying his home page - the way I read it Rogers superimposed a message on their web page, they did not modify it - that happens all the time and has for years....

and finally he compared that to eavesdropping on a phone call which is an even more ridiculous comparison.


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## magnuscanadiana (Jun 26, 2007)

corey111 said:


> Rogers needs to learn that the internet is a new way of getting media...


I think they have realized this, hence the cap. Yet another way to stick people with additional charges


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## vacuvox (Sep 5, 2003)

magnuscanadiana said:


> hence the cap. Yet another way to stick people with additional charges


I know I'm going to get slammed for this... but I think a charge based on transfer volume is just fine. This is how utilities work and I think its a fair model provided the charges are reasonable.


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## UnleashedLive (Aug 9, 2004)

I've been with Rogers for 2 years and I've always had a cap. It used to be ~102gb now they bumped it down to 90gb, but are increasing my speed up to 10mbps. Oh well, it's all I can get here, it's Rogers or some 256kb/s DSL.


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## 5andman (Oct 15, 2006)

vacuvox said:


> I know I'm going to get slammed for this... but I think a charge based on transfer volume is just fine. This is how utilities work and I think its a fair model provided the charges are reasonable.


The internet isn't a utility.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

I would GLADLY accept download caps or metered usage **IF** in return the ISP would block all spam. Why should I be charged for spam?

(I don't know if there's such a law in Canada, but in the states you can sue and prosecute "junk faxers" because they cost you money without your consent.)


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## misty (Oct 31, 2007)

I agree with Chas, although I'm not sure exactly how much traffic is caused by spam, I can only imagine it's huge.. yes, there oughtta be a law in Canada about this. (last month I was getting 1200 A DAY)
Not sure if there is a clear cut bottom line on this.. other than to suggest to those who are using that much bandwith to perhaps find another solution.

Did any one hear the story on cbc radio this morning? Interesting discussion along these lines.. the ethical card seems to be in play more and more. There IS limited bandwith right now.. those who NEED it sometimes don't get it because of some who are abusing it... 
Question is.. what would you do if you were Ted? Or MaBell? 

mi


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## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

Just out of interest I went to Rogers site to check out the offerings. (I did this because I know nothing about the services they offer.)

On the comparision page you can see the cap levels. All the rates for going over the cap are on linked page. This is fine.

There is also a good link to a glossary of terms and a link that gives you additional information about usage and billing. This is fine.

However I do not see any information that indicates that encrypted traffic or torrent traffic is restrained or slowed. I would assume, if I was to sign up, that this traffic would come down at full speed. Is this the case?

If Rogers is actually constraining certain traffic across their network it should be made extremely clear at this point. After all a was in the sign up process and should know exactly what's in my 'cart'!

If I want to get Rogers service and use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to connect with my office it should work. If it doesn't, due to encrypted packets being slowed, I wouldn't consider Rogers are being forth right with their service.

As for limited band width I can't speak to what is happening on the Cable system but on Bell's system, from what I have read, there isn't a problem. It is more cash grab and anti-competitive behaviour then anything else.


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

Okay, who *believes* the ISPs' line that there is "limited bandwidth" at the moment? Come on, hold you hand up high? No one?

That's the funniest thing I've heard since they thought "negative billing" was going to work out well.





misty said:


> I agree with Chas, although I'm not sure exactly how much traffic is caused by spam, I can only imagine it's huge.. yes, there oughtta be a law in Canada about this. (last month I was getting 1200 A DAY)
> Not sure if there is a clear cut bottom line on this.. other than to suggest to those who are using that much bandwith to perhaps find another solution.
> 
> Did any one hear the story on cbc radio this morning? Interesting discussion along these lines.. the ethical card seems to be in play more and more. There IS limited bandwith right now.. those who NEED it sometimes don't get it because of some who are abusing it...
> ...


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## misty (Oct 31, 2007)

HowEver said:


> Okay, who *believes* the ISPs' line that there is "limited bandwidth" at the moment? Come on, hold you hand up high? No one?
> 
> That's the funniest thing I've heard since they thought "negative billing" was going to work out well.


Really?? So there is an infinite amount of fiber that is ALREADY in place ready for market?? I'm curious about that swamp land too.. but it LOOKS like the limits of what is already there is tapped out... 
Unless of course somebody is hoarding...

And what make you so sure that "NB" is extinct?


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## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

Just what happened to all that optical fibre cable that was laid in the past that remained unlit because of lack of demand? 

If there was a demand crisis I would have thought it would have been all over our papers with numerous companies coming to the rescue (Bell & Rogers being first in line) to save us from the catastrophe possibly having internet bottlenecks. This news would have been appearing for months! It would have been like the Y2K crisis. Headlines, evening news, etc. This is a manufactured crisis!

Bell & Rogers have happened across a cheap way to make money; use legal agreements to reduce service while not investing our fees in improving service.

I can't find the link, but TekSavvy detailed their investment in their service and it seemed to be in the 10 or 100 of thousands of dollars. And huge fees to Bell to buy adequate bandwidth. Bell is contractually required to move bits for TekSavvy. If Bell can't do it they should take TekSavvy's fees and invest it in equipment. 

There is no bandwidth problem.


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## misty (Oct 31, 2007)

bgw said:


> Just what happened to all that optical fibre cable that was laid in the past that remained unlit because of lack of demand?
> 
> If there was a demand crisis I would have thought it would have been all over our papers with numerous companies coming to the rescue (Bell & Rogers being first in line) to save us from the catastrophe possibly having internet bottlenecks. This news would have been appearing for months! It would have been like the Y2K crisis. Headlines, evening news, etc. This is a manufactured crisis!
> 
> ...


Question remains.. what would YOU do?


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

misty said:


> I agree with Chas, although I'm not sure exactly how much traffic is caused by spam, I can only imagine it's huge.. yes, there oughtta be a law in Canada about this. (last month I was getting 1200 A DAY)


The question is how does an ISP figure out something is spam?
I had my ISP turn the spam filter off on my account because it kept picking up too many legitimate emails.
And I can't imagine why some people get so much spam - I have had my email address for at least 10 years (I think) and I now get less spam than ever - not even anywhere close to 1200 A YEAR.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

HowEver said:


> Okay, who *believes* the ISPs' line that there is "limited bandwidth" at the moment? Come on, hold you hand up high? No one?


Of course there is limited bandwidth - none of the transport mechanism will give you infinite bandwidth. Have you never noticed momentary hesitation when you download something? 
Do you think Bell or Rogers only throttles for a split second or so?

My perception is that access over the net is slower than it used to be and not just since this throttling issue came up.
And the buried fibre is only part of the equation, one needs equipment to interconnect the fibre and switch the traffic as well.


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## Kosh (May 27, 2002)

HowEver said:


> Okay, who *believes* the ISPs' line that there is "limited bandwidth" at the moment? Come on, hold you hand up high? No one?


Well, I don't think it's unlimited, but I assume they have accounted for enough bandwidth for enough people in my area to have 18mbps lines and a 95MB cap, so therefore I can't possibly abuse the network by going over my 60MB cap on my itsy-bitsy 7mbps line. After all, I'm going 3 times slower than those super users, of course then I have to count the traffic of the line going to my HDTV too, but it's probably nowhere near a 7mbps internet line. 

In fact you'd have a hard time convincing me that anything I'm doing on my 7mbps line is hurting Rogers network, UNLESS of course their network can't handle the users that it should. Ie. if Rogers has 70% of the TV in the neighborhood and 60% of the internet users at various speeds (10% 18mbps, 10% 10mbps, 35% 7mbps, 5% other), then their network should account for that and a buffer of a certain percentage.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

I'm looking at this whole issue more from a global perspective although you can of course also get localized statistics.
This is the global picture at 3am Eastern. North America is pretty much asleep with an index over 90% but look at Asia where people are using the net - way down at 57 with a downward trend to boot and it's Saturday. Not very good.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

krs said:


> I'm looking at this whole issue more from a global perspective although you can of course also get localized statistics.
> This is the global picture at 3am Eastern. North America is pretty much asleep with an index over 90% but look at Asia where people are using the net - way down at 57 with a downward trend to boot and it's Saturday. Not very good.



krs I don't see the point you are trying to make with this. In fact with a global rating of 80 I would say that is a pretty good indication that the whole "bandwidth shortage" is a red herring. Infrastructures *are* localized we don't have the same cable or fibre optics as they do in Asia. To try and justify an action by a North American telco based on the infrastructure and demand in Asia makes no sense to me at all.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

krs said:


> Of course there is limited bandwidth - none of the transport mechanism will give you infinite bandwidth. Have you never noticed momentary hesitation when you download something?
> Do you think Bell or Rogers only throttles for a split second or so?
> 
> My perception is that access over the net is slower than it used to be and not just since this throttling issue came up.
> And the buried fibre is only part of the equation, one needs equipment to interconnect the fibre and switch the traffic as well.


krs your perception may be true because you live in Ontario and are stuck with Rogers or Bell. I live in Quebec and am with Videotron where I can get *home* service at 50 Mbps for $75/mnth. Now my budget doesn't allow for that and I don't need that much speed, I'm quite happy with 10Mbps. It just goes further to point out that bandwidth is not a "global issue" it is mostly local as we in Quebec clearly have no bandwidth issues at all if we can get 50 Mbps connections for $75 a month.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

screature - What I wanted to look at is the effect of load on the traffic index.
That's why I posted the snapshot in my post above - at 3am eastern, I assume the load in North America was very light and the load in Asia was much heavier - but it being a weekend, who knows.
So now the question is, does the North American traffic index drop significantly during heavy North American load periods which are typically around 11 am and again around 2pm local time.
Monday is probably not a good day to check, but Tuesday to Thursday would be.
If the North American traffic index drops significantly from the 91 benchmark above, then I would suggest "limited bandwidth" is an issue - if it doesn't, well, then it's not.

At least one way to look at IMHO.


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

krs said:


> And I can't imagine why some people get so much spam - I have had my email address for at least 10 years (I think) and I now get less spam than ever - not even anywhere close to 1200 A YEAR.


Thinking about it, I receive perhaps something like 50-70 spam per day (on three mail accounts); and for a few weeks at the end of March, I was getting upwards of 200 spam in each account. The crazy thing is, I have never published one of my e-mail accounts anywhere, and I only use it with a very limited number of people. But the hackers cracked open a Yahoo server in England, so the flood came in.

At least spam can be easily deleted after a quick review. I think the greater problem is that of poorly designed websites that have far too much garbage attached, like useless Flash video, or graphics that take far too long to render. For myself, I prefer content, and for that, a simpler sight without bells and whistles is better. And I really hate the sites that put music into it, because it ruins my listening to iTunes. It might be different if it is a music site, but I have seen that kind of trash all over the place.

I also dislike all of the pop-ups, pop-unders, pop-sideways, and what is with the Party-Poker.com garbage??? Lucky for Firefox add ons.

Of course, the worst spam is that generated by the marketing departments of Bell and Rogers, who are pretty much comitted to deception and lies to grab some quick cash.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

krs said:


> screature - What I wanted to look at is the effect of load on the traffic index.
> That's why I posted the snapshot in my post above - at 3am eastern, I assume the load in North America was very light and the load in Asia was much heavier - but it being a weekend, who knows.
> So now the question is, does the North American traffic index drop significantly during heavy North American load periods which are typically around 11 am and again around 2pm local time.
> Monday is probably not a good day to check, but Tuesday to Thursday would be.
> ...


Look forward to seeing your post for those time frames. I would suspect that the index will drop in NA during those times, but again the index is an amalgamation and would not be specific to the demands on Bell's infrastructure. That is what we really need to know in order to determine if their claims are legitimate, relative to their particular situation, IMHO.


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

krs said:


> First he talks about a "clear violation of "Net Neutrality" - to date I couldn't find any consistent and accepted definition what that even means and even if there were one, it's certainly not the law....
> 
> then he talks about Rogers modifying his home page - the way I read it Rogers superimposed a message on their web page, they did not modify it - that happens all the time and has for years...


Net Neutrality does not exist legally. However, our Constitution does guarantee the Freedom of Expression and the Freedom of the Press. Roger's tampering with information certaily infringes upon these principles, and is patently illegal.

Now, if they were doing those "deep packet inspections", they can only do it with an eye to looking for various illegal activities, and only under the authority of a Writ of Assistance, as issued to law enforcement by a judge.

Rogers shouldn't be fooling with any web content, for any reason other than they covered by the legal provisions of a legal writ or warrant, (and then, only on a case by case basis, as legally proscribed). They shouldn't be mangling data because if I was to prublish a web page, or a document, or whatever, I for one would want it to be sent as it was written, not edited or censored illegally by some third party. Without having a writ or warrant, they are acting to impinge upon those freedoms enshrined within our Constitution, which is paramount to even their most evil whims. And I don't care if they do it by editing, or by overlays - they are acting illegally and should pay the consquences for their shamefilled actions.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

EvanPitts said:


> Net Neutrality does not exist legally.


Yes - I realize that. I was actually looking for a definition - if I check on the net I get half a dozen or so.
Seems to me if you want *pure* net neutrality. where all traffic is treated absolutely the same, then QoS goes out the window - so does VoIP and any service that depends on real time transmission and gets preferential treatment today.

It just annoys me when Digital Home and others make statements that an ISP violates "Net Neutrality" when one can't even find a definition of what that actually means.



> Rogers VP Phil Hartling told Hugh Thompson, Publisher of Digital Home Canada, the periodic alteration of publishers webpages by the corporate giant was not a violation of net neutrality, rather it was a perfectly acceptable business practice.
> 
> For the record, Digital Home Canada believes that the actions taken by Rogers Cable are a clear violation of net neutrality.


What I read out of the article published by Digital Home is they got upset because Rogers superimposed a message over the Digital Home page that the subscriber had exceeded their 60GB cap - I have no clue how that would relate to "Net Neutrality" at all - none of the "Net Neutrality" definitions I have come across had anything to do with superimposing information on a web site a subscriber accesses. All I can assume is that Digital Home has yet another definition of "Net Neutrality".


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## 5andman (Oct 15, 2006)

EvanPitts said:


> Net Neutrality does not exist legally. However, our Constitution does guarantee the Freedom of Expression and the Freedom of the Press. Roger's tampering with information certaily infringes upon these principles, and is patently illegal.
> 
> Now, if they were doing those "deep packet inspections", they can only do it with an eye to looking for various illegal activities, and only under the authority of a Writ of Assistance, as issued to law enforcement by a judge.
> 
> Rogers shouldn't be fooling with any web content, for any reason other than they covered by the legal provisions of a legal writ or warrant, (and then, only on a case by case basis, as legally proscribed). They shouldn't be mangling data because if I was to prublish a web page, or a document, or whatever, I for one would want it to be sent as it was written, not edited or censored illegally by some third party. Without having a writ or warrant, they are acting to impinge upon those freedoms enshrined within our Constitution, which is paramount to even their most evil whims. And I don't care if they do it by editing, or by overlays - they are acting illegally and should pay the consquences for their shamefilled actions.


I totally agree.

Strictly by tampering with web content -- that would be illegal or grounds for legal action?

If I did something similar to a Walt Disney website -- I would have an army of Disney lawyers knocking down my doors.


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## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

krs said:


> Seems to me if you want *pure* net neutrality. where all traffic is treated absolutely the same, then QoS goes out the window - so does VoIP and any service that depends on real time transmission and gets preferential treatment today.


For me, I think Net Neutrality is just a term that people hide behind to "justify" their use or abuse of networks. I think that the Internet needs to have certain priorities, the highest priority going to those things that can not be done by any other means, like e-mail, looking at web pages, and operating remote systems. Then priority should be given to file transfers, with software updates the highest priority and regular downloading a lower priority. Then "the rest" should be given to those things that can be done by regular means, like watching TV or making phone calls.

Of course, the VOIP fans would not like my classification system, but having had to use it, with the crummy sound quality and constant repeating of words and sentences, when one could just use a telephone, like grandpa used to. That is, if we had a real phone company with realistic rates.



> ...they got upset because Rogers superimposed a message over the Digital Home page that the subscriber had exceeded their 60GB cap


There is aways a real story. The user hit the cap, and should be warned. I thought it was Rogers putting ads and links into web pages - which is most certainly wrong. But if it is a warning about the cap, then the user deserves what they get. Maybe they need to have FlashBlock and AdBlock, and regain some of their bandwidth.


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## jicon (Jan 12, 2005)

HowEver said:


> Okay, who *believes* the ISPs' line that there is "limited bandwidth" at the moment? Come on, hold you hand up high? No one?
> 
> That's the funniest thing I've heard since they thought "negative billing" was going to work out well.


From the ISP's main office connecting to other networks via fiber? No question, NOT an issue. 

"limited bandwidth" on routers that handle modem connections in a neighborhood? Absolutely.

Cable systems were originally meant to transmit signal to your door. That means you can have a relatively large pipe to receive data, as amplifiers over the years have been optimized to push all the TV channels to your home. 

Internet requires a return signal. The return signal is the problem. So many more areas that now need return amplifiers on the cable line, so many old bits of cable, with shoddy splitters only allowing one way signal. That is the reason why you cannot nearly transmit data as fast as you receive. A lot smaller pipe is available to transmit signal back - and the reason why those sharing files, hosting web servers, etc pose the biggest risk to the neighborhood's network.
Upload traffic should be reduced to a minimum to ensure the network remains relatively fast for home users.

I'm not sure how Rogers monitors their cable system, but I know out west, one of the upper TV channels hosts a spectrum analyzer, which shows cable modem signal represented as a fairly high "bump". The analyzer can be switched between different neighborhoods to determine problem areas with upload signal. The signal to the left and right of the bump indicate the relative noise level on the line around that frequency. If that noise rises thru the "bump", then problematic connections occur. Modems fall offline, upstream traffic gets lost... That "bump" can be configured to transmit higher than the noise floor, but doing so significantly affects the upload pipe, essentially halfing the upload pipe each time the db signal is adjusted on the router.

Once the return signal conundrum can be addressed either thru a new modem standard, or cleaner return signals, I'm sure the upload pipe can be opened, ensuring a restriction is not needed to control traffic throughput.

Whether the infrastructure investment makes good business sense at the moment, well that's up to the ISPs to decide.


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