Rogers: Now with More Bullshit (and Baseball)

i actually think that rogers' way to deal with the allocation of bandwidth resources among users is more sensible than bell's way.

having said that, now that rogers is moving away from so called umlimited usage to multi-tired bandwidth caps, they should stop their practice of throttling torrents. will they do that? don't know.

bell has been beaten up lately for their practice of throttling torrents, deservedly so. but rogers has been guilty as well.

I got a similar letter earlier this week and reacted pretty much the same way...

I understand why Rogers is doing this. I do not feel that a few select users should be allowed to consume 100% of their alloted bandwidth 24/7. I realize it's an unlimited plan, but when bandwidth usage is beyond reasonable, I feel Rogers has the right to step in. It's unfortunate that "regular" users have to now worry about a bandwidth cap.

I got baseball tickets last year and I was so angry wtih Rogers that I shredded them.
This year, I have another frustration. I'm being double billed for Digital Services yet I have only one set-top box in use. The previous set-top is in the hall closet. Somehow they decided that I should pay twice because there are two on my record even though one is inactive and they know full well it is.

Every month, I go through the same routine getting the extra 2.99 removed from my bill which takes up a lot of their time. Try as they might, they can't get the problem fixed.

This is costing them more in clerical wages than the amount in duspute. Talk about throwing good money after bad!

It seems to me that Rogers cares more about the shareholders than the subscribers and profit is more important than value for money for the subscribers.

John Tory was once an officer with Rogers--among others.
Even he couldn't do things right when he was at Rogers.
We'll not talk about this CFL days.

If I get tickets this year, maybe I'll give them away or maybe blogTO readers could pool all their tickets and give them to the Scott Mission or Good Neighbours' Club.

Would it be possible to do that?

As if Rogers would actually give us something other than unsolicited Cable ad-mail... nope, just the notice. No baseball tickets.
Ridiculous.

@David Toronto
I like your ticket pool for charity idea, but I'm unsure that it's possible. On the letter sent by Rogers, it says "It's simple; just present your voucher at Rogers Centre... and you'll receive two free tickets..." but on the voucher, it says "Letter must be surrendered with tickets."

The letter is addressed to a specific person, so if the Jays/Rogers insist that only the specified customer can pick up the tickets, your idea is busted.

But if we collected a bunch of letters and vouchers and went down to get tickets for a large group for charity, and they turned us away, that would be truly evil.

I say we go for it.

Also included in the new cap charges mail is a illustratinve list of things one can do with 60Gb of bandwidth tranfer.

They claim that with 60Gb of transfer, one can play games online for 2040 hours in a given month. Anyone else see why that's not possible?

If I get tix, then I'm in. Any others?

I got this on Thursday as well.. At first I thought it would be their 30th letter informing me about their new home phone service, but I guess they decided to break up the monotony a bit by sending a rate increase.

Come to think about it, they haven't phoned my cell in a few days to let me know about the home phone service either. Maybe they've finally gotten the hint.

I disagree with having a cap..
But i did sign up 10 years ago when it was
"unlimited speed, unlimited usage"..

lol, BUT.. as far as a cap goes..
it ain't ~that~ bad of a cap is it ?

in my craziest downloading month of the last 6,
I reached 48 gigs (and that is an abnormality for me)

Like, it could have been worse,
could have been 50gigs or 40..

Though I do strongly agree,
if were on a DL cap, then the speed cap must go.
lol.. its better for us, and its better for rogers too ! :P
(cause then were more likely to be "tricked" in to going
over our DL cap and having to pay them more money.)

(sorry, guess i should mention i'm just basing my opinion on the "express" tier that i'm on)

Death, taxes, & Rogers increasing their fees.

The problem is without any real competition it will be 30 gig soon enough.

and just when i was getting tired complaining about our cell phone data rates... thank you rogers/bell for giving me something else to target my anger towards.

where's anonymous when you need them.

...and no, i didn't even get stink'en Jay's tickets with my data cap.

All users should pay per Kb, like water or electricity or gas, with "night-saver" incentives, and have "light/ultralight/extreme" distinctions removed. This would mean a user who only uses the internet a few times a month could get screaming fast connections during that time but paying the same bill as for an ultra light connection that spends most of the month unused. Similarly, torrent users could schedule their clients to kick in at 11pm and shutdown at 6am.

@ Mark Dowling

Those ideas are all terrible, IMO. We need less control and more freedom of information. Pay per Kb?! I can only iamgine how unfairly that would be priced.

Throttling will continue with Rogers' new usage plans!

see this quote from the globe:

He [Phil Hartling, vice-president of consumer services for Rogers Cable] said the new service fees are similar to those of other ISPs ... Mr. Hartling said Rogers's plans will not change the company's policies regarding traffic management.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080327.broadband28/BNStory/Technology/home

if rogers ask high usage users to pay more, then why still restrict usage on a specific type of traffic (ie encrypted)? this is like the worst of both worlds.

heavy torrent users need an option so that they won't so-called 'ruined the experience for others'. rogers doens't provide such option. nor does bell. nor do bell's resellers. who else is there??

When they wrote that now you can pay for the extra usage they meant that they won't turn off your internet. Before if you would go over 60gigs that would send you a letter and turn off your internet or significantly reduce the speed.

Hmm, that's interesting. According to your photo above, Ultra-Lite users only have 2GB usage allowance/month. I got the same letter and am on Ultra-Lite, but mine says 60GB in that same space, AND on the "what you can do with 60GB" page says "your...Ultra-Lite service includes...allowance of 60GB" so it's not a mistake. Curious to know why Ultra-Lite gets more usage than Lite?

@ Carrie

You should look into that further (and let us know why there's a discrepancy). It may be that you're on some sort of special limited time introductory package that gives you more bandwidth transfer limit. It may be that after a few months it'll return to 2Gb and then "you can pay" $5 per Gb when you go over your cap.

I'm not on an introductory offer.

@ Carrie

"Ultra Lite and Lite customers who signed up prior to January 14, 2008 have a usage allowance of 60 GB."

I figured it out by reading the fine print here.

@Jerrold

I actually think Mark Dowling's idea is a good one. But the price would probably have to be regulated, given the lack on competition in Canada. The idea being that if ISP's charge per KB, they would have no justification for throttling and filtering.

However, a better idea might be for the CRTC to get off their asses and require that the bandwidth purchased by resellers (such as TekSavvy) be completely unfiltered and unthrottled. Also, I'm not sure why I haven't seen any Rogers resellers, but they should be required to participate in that as well. This country needs competition so badly in the telecommunications space.

@ James

If regulated it could work, but unregulated it would be a complete disaster under the current monopolistic arrangement.

i think i will cancel my service because of this. i use torrents to trade old boxing videos out of print and not for sale and that requires me to seed while i occasionally leech, the plan i have now allows me to do that with no problem, so rogers is going to change the rules on this and now i pay more when i signed up for a certain plan?, its the same reason i left telus, they kept changing the service terms on me when i had signed up for a certain plan. any ideas of other internet providers that could be better?

I got my letter too (but no baseball tickets) and I noticed that I only use about 10GB per month on my Express package, so I'm now actually considering getting the Lite one and save $10 a month. Considering, and not sure yet, because I don't think I can handle the frustration of slower speeds. I wish there was some kind of custom package, where you could pick you own speed and usage allowance limit. So in my case I would want the speed of the express package but can easily make do with the usage of the lite, and would pay $5 less than I do now (or $5 more than Lite, for extra speed, depending on how you look at it)

I'm online a LOT and I just checked my monthly usage for the first time. I average only 6GB/month, which shocked me...I thought it would be a lot higher. Eva - Ultra Lite isn't that bad for speed...not as bad as I thought it would be. You should try it, since you can always switch back with a quick phone call.

If what Rogers claims here is accurate, I could never step down to Ultra-lite and still remain even remotely efficient.

I'd consider myself a high-usage customer, one of those people ISPs have made popular to vilify. I download movies, music, games, and lots of it. Is my usage affecting you? Chances are, no. Not in the least.

Rogers has sold me a service and allotted me, and each of you who subscribe to their Internet service, a maximum data rate. If their infrastructure cannot handle customers utilizing what they've sold, shouldn't it be on their shoulders to provide this? They need to increase their capacity rather than punishing customers who are simply using what they've been given. An example of this is their throttling of torrents. If you can't provide what you've sold, decrease your offering or improve your network.

The bandwidth cap is very old news though, but it looks as though they've actually raised the caps. Extreme Plus was actually capped at the same amount as Express when it was introduced if I remember correctly.

As I said, I consider myself a high usage customer, but these caps don't bother me. Just a fact of life really, and it's never been "unlimited". I use a program called DU Meter to keep track of my usage which works exceptionally well. Allows you to generate daily/weekly/monthly reports, setup alarms to notify you when you're getting close to a certain amount (so you can avoid overages), etc.

I view caps as a definite step backwards. I don't think I've ever exceeded even 10 Gigs per month, but the very idea of a cap just bothers me. That's why I'm on an unlimited plan (not with Rogers), even if it's slightly slower.

Not to mention that Rogers used to be so awful in so many other respects (and for all I know still could be) that it would take some major ravings by Rogers users for me to ever consider using them as a provider.

"I'd consider myself a high-usage customer, one of those people ISPs have made popular to vilify. I download movies, music, games, and lots of it."

And you're entitled to. I really hate it when they first grant you "unlimited" usage, and then try to enforce some ideas of what's "reasonable" from their point of view. With an unlimited package, you should be able to use all of your bandwidth 24/7. Otherwise don't bloody call it unlimited.

Rogers Internet tech support just told me that Rogers stopped traffic shaping when they introduced the bandwidth caps. I'm normally a pretty trusting person, but that sounds a bit far-fetched to me. Has anybody else heard anything along these lines, or is Rogers just outright lying to its customers?

Really? Capping your bandwidth at 60 gig PER MONTH is that upsetting?? I download a lot and I've never gone over 15 gigs in a month...the bandwidth shaping, on the other hand, must go..

I work with someone who left Rogers recently. This person worked with the Rogers Project Managers who were constantly coming up with new features for their network, and each time the staff would remind them their network can't handle even what's offered today. Rogers has oversold its network three, four times over and will lose a lot of clients once people wake up to this fact. Oh, their customer service is a joke too. I strongly encourage everyone I know to dump ROGERS and always look to spell out EXACTLY how much they charge them monthly, how much they could save my looking at alternatives.

i disagee with the cap... i thought for cable, we are NOT sharing(that's what they used to advertise)..so how would my download affect other users, technically... second, if they put a cap, then i think it is only fair that if I don't use up to the maximum amount allocated, I should be allowed to bank it for another month or get a refund!

If you're downloading more than 60gb a month, then chances are you're downloading movies off of torrent sites. So, you have to pay a few extra dollars for the 25 DVD's you downloaded. Doesn't seem that bad.

The only way I see this as being bad is if you spend a lot of time on the road and perhaps have a .mac account. With .mac, you can access your home computer form on the road very easily and transfer files. Obviously, .mac isn't the only way of doing this, it's just the one I know. But my point is, that can pump up your transfer rates.

I started a website just to address this situation.

http://www.rogersmustdie.blogspot.com/

Re: David Toronto's comment, "John Tory was once an officer with Rogers--among others. Even he couldn't do things right when he was at Rogers.

All too true. When I was working at Rogers -- and Tory was campaigning for one of his failed political bids (as mayor of TO in 2003) -- all employees were harassed by phone messages that went directly to our in-box. These messages stated, "Come meet John Tory in Roger's cafeteria!" Wooo! Other than being wildly inappropriate, I contacted higher-ups to NOT have these messages sent to my phone. They said there was nothing they could do. I wish I'd saved some of these messages: they made it sound like meeting Tory was akin to having a private audience with Pope JohnPaul II.

I know I'm off-point here with regard to Rogers, bandwidth and fees, but they are just soooooo irritating on so many levels, including customer service, billing, and hidden fees (what the hell is "system access," anyway?)

I wrote about Rogers High Speed Practices two years ago.

http://thedailynar.blogspot.com/2006/02/happy-geek-time-corner-rogers-and.html

Glad to see nothing has changed. I now pay almost $70/month for basic cable. I hate Rogers with a passion. "We're changin our rates to serve ourselves better".

don't any of you have a contract with rogers so how can they start to change more if when you sighed up with them you only had to pay one monthly fee for unlimted?this just doesn't make sense to me if they can change my plan why can't I leave with no fiancial concequences?

Without reading all the comments, I'll say the following. I've been a Rogers user since Imoved to Toronto in 2005. I've ALWAYS had a 60gb down/up cap. They didn't just recently institute this or anything, people just might not have known it existed. The big change was that the ultra speed users now have 95gb instead of the 60gb they had before. Lite users now have less than before, but they likely weren't using it anyways if they were lite users.

As for paying extra for going over? Always been the case as well. And here's the kicker, I've gone over my limit twice, once by 10 (TEN!) gigs, and Rogers NEVER charged me a cent. They charge on a per violation basis meaning if you go over frequently (or obscenely) then they'll ding you. Having gone ten gigs over and not paid an extra cent, I gotta say I'm pretty happy with their LAX enforcement.

I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill here dude.

And lastly, the 800kbps download speed I get is disgustingly awesome. Can't say I'm unhappy!

@ Ryan C

Your argument already ate its own tail, dude. The change is official. When you go over your cap next time, you WILL pay additional charges. You no longer have to be going over frequently for them to justify charging you or anyone else. See?

Rogers says I've been downloading around 130 gigs a month, which surprised me a little. I thought I was hovering around 60 gigs a month but I didn't consider the other people in the household. I guess you can blame people like me for the cap.

@ Sam

Is your wireless network protected with a fresh WEP/WPA password? If your usage is 2x your expectations perhaps others are tapping in?

I betcha you don't get credit for going under the bandwidth that you pay for under the new plan! For example, if I buy an extra 35 gigs by going from Lite to Express and don't use that extra bandwidth say 1 month, do I get to bank it the next month? Not very likely!

Also, this isn't going to speed things up. The heavy users are still going to use and consume bandwidth and slow down traffic flow; they are just going to pay Rogers more money for the right to do so.

I don't get it!

Why is net usage any different than say cable usage? When I pay for cable I do so knowing that I don't have any limitations placed upon me as far as worrying about having to pay a surcharge if I decide to use too much cable bandwidth that month. So why should I have to worry about using extra net bandwidth?

Hi Jerrold,
Kids Up Front Toronto would love those tickets. Ironically, they are currently organizing a group outing to the Blue Jays as a fundraiser.
"Across Canada, Kids Up Front creates fun and new experiences for kids, by forwarding your unused tickets. If you Can't Use Your Tickets, donate them to us and we'll make sure they reach the thousands of kids who could really benefit from them. Together, we're helping to heal, bond and unite."
http://www.kidsupfront.com/TO-about.htm

Upon receiving my letter from Rogers, I immediately saw red...I was so angry that I went searching the net for alternatives...Guess what I found...NOTHING any better than the garbage being pushed down my throat...So I am stuck with Rogers like the rest of you (Bell is just as bad).

I use a good chunk of my allotted 60gigs a month...BUT and here is is, why should I get charged gigs that I have not used? Why can't these gigs go in a bank...I mean I have paid for the gigs. I am sure many cell phone users feel the same frustration with monthly minutes they don't use one month, but the next month when they go over, there are the extra charges.

This is simply ridiculous they we the consumer are paying for things we may not be receiving.

I really have no solution to this problem...I just needed to vent.

This cap is NOT to improve service, speed, customer service (which blows on a good day) or anything else...This cap is to put money in the pockets of Rogers company.

BTW - The ticket idea is great!

Nancy - www.teksavvy.com. 200 GB limit or unlimited.

For everyone complaining that they shouldn't pay for gigs they don't use, this is nothing new. Buy a cell phone monthly plan and you'll pay for your thousand minutes even if you don't use them all.

You may not pay for the amount of tv you watch, but if you buy a cable plan and only really watch 2 of the 5 extra channels you pay for, you never got any money back.

Buy two sandwiches but only eat one? You ain't getting your money back. Same for all you can eat, pay 20$ and only eat a small salad? Your own loss.

Got a 2gb monthly webhosting plan, but only use 5 megs?

I think you might see my point. This is nothing new and if you go over 60gb, well, pay for extra. If you don't hit 60gb then get a smaller plan. It's not like there aren't any options out there people.

This cap is NOT to improve service, speed, customer service (which blows on a good day) or anything else...This cap is to put money in the pockets of Rogers company.
100 % is right
I was Rogers?s customer 5 or 6 years, only due to I could not find alternative. I heat this company so much. I am ready to pay 100 CAD now for person who tell me when this monopolist monster will die. And I will be happy to watch this.

You heavy users that are complaining about additional usage charges make me laugh. You've reimbursed the copyright holders of all those movies and albums you've been downloading, right? Right??

Are you not aware that: you can buy movies online? you can buy music online? you can buy games online? you can download free Linux ISO distributions online? You do realize that we pay double taxes on every blank CD/DVD/HD-DVD, right?

As of late, new game patches are weighing over 1GB and subsequents can be equal or greater. In order to legally own several copies of Half-life 2 (example) each computer must download (or buy) additional licensed copies. Then add the gigabytes of updates on top of that. Some digital download games (i.e. Direct2Drive) are getting close to 10GB mark. Has this become illegal? Is that called complaining because I'm paying for services, to which I have a right to download the content for? Is is not unusual to own 10 or more PC games?

You know you can legally purchase and download Windows Vista from Microsoft, right? That's ~ 2GB. Let's not forget all the additional patches needed to keep your computer safe. Because if you don't. Rogers will tag you, saying your network has a virus. How about virus, spyware, ad-ware scanners? They take bandwidth too.

Port throttling is not only on torrent connections. It is on all encrypted ports. That would include banking, pay pal, and anything requiring a secure connection. This is basically a violation of your rights as a consumer. As the law in Ontario clearly states that the terms of service must not be grossly in favour of the seller. In which, Rogers are clearly in violation of.

I'm already paying a grossly disproportionate fee of $60/month for a 10Mb connection with a 95GB cap. In the U.K. a typical 24Mb connection costs roughly $36/month (CAD) with a 500GB cap. You want to accuse Canadians along with Hollywood for downloading movies? Let's see. 300 million U.S. citizens compared to 30 million Canadian citizens. What are the odds? Do you know where the bulk of these movies come from? Hollywood executives, that's right, the lions den itself.

Music downloading? Oh really? Funny that the CRIA quietly released their own findings, showing that the majority of the 'downloaders' are in fact their customers. I'm so sick of hearing this b.s. from people about Canadians downloading. Our government was lobbied by Hollywood to pass a U.S. style law in Canada within six months. All of which were based on pure lies.

Sorry, but I have every right to complain!

If Rogers is going to charge me for excessive bandwidth usage they better improve upon their email spam filtering so that I don't waste any of my bandwidth downloading the thousands of spam headers I receive every month.

The BS things is, the usage measurement is not accurate at all. Yeah, I use BT so what, but there is no F*ing way I use up all 60G bandwidth in the 4th day of the month. Assuming I got 24 hrs downloading (In fact I did). But they have cap the traffic. In average, I need to have 15G of traffic per day in order to achieve that. Come on~~~.....what the heck..it is impossible

Does the 95gb cap include both up and down traffic or just what you download? My total for just one week of internet usage is over 27gb (up & down combined). If I signed up for unlimited and that was what was advertised and sold to me, then how can they just up and change that agreement though? Is there not a legal issue here contractually?

It does include both upload and download traffic.

Crap! See I was thinking it included both up and down traffic but wasn't sure. That just sucks. Why is it I always feel I'm getting screwed by Rogers. Oh wait because I am... we all are. I still think there has to be legal contractual stance here. I purchased unlimited not capped. It would be like leasing a good car and then half way into things they take it back and give you a beater in place. I think the first thing is for everyone to get together and take a stance. Together we are more powerful and all the whining in the world isn't going to help unless we all do something. I wrote the BBB and the CRTC and the Canada Consumer Agency about this. Capped internet service is not what was sold to me and what I paid for. Everyone should take the time to file a complaint with these places too.

All I have to say is their marketing team obviously didn't do enough research first of all in regards to the baseball tickets. Oh, I got my ticket alright, it came straight into the mail and the first thing that went through my mind was: "Not everyone watches baseball..." Personally, it's almost as if they are giving away free tickets to fill up their standiums... hello? Why're you giving away free tickets unless no body/at least not a lot of people really cares about it and that's why now you're hoping your Roger's customers can help you out by slapping a ticket right in their face to promote your games? That is just sad... and I have read that not everyone got their tickets either? And this whole whole capping thing... the heck with that?! I didn't pay Express for 60 GB and quite frankly, even before this whole capping change, I had a problem with Rogers; they were always unstable and my internet would disconnect from time to time. I called customer service and they told me to follow the steps and it connects and then 5 mins later, it disconnects again. But to only have 60 Gb?! Looks to me like Roger's is wearing a hat that their heads can't fit into. We as consumers buy the service or goods as we see it otherwise, the company falsely advertised it. When we get charged with extra costs for a lb for bananas, do we not get justice when we ask the cashiers to correct it? Where is our justice for this Roger's vaccuming-money-scheme? If they couldn't uphold their advertising for people that paid for unlimited or as advertised service, they should at least give the customers a decent reply, not by saying "to improve our service or whatever b.s they said = we need to cut some people off to increase "space" or "chances" for people to make more money (ie. when you go over the limit)" This whole Duo-monopoly with Roger's being the biggest marketshare holder should really have someone kick them in the behind.

Apparently they're desperate for blue jay fans/viewers. If anyone hasn't gotten tickets, you can get your $2 tickets on tuesday (200 series seats, which are pretty decent) here:

http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/tor/schedule/home_schedule.jsp

So how many people here to date have written Rogers, the CRTC, Comsumer Agency of Canada, the BBB?? Anyone? All these unhappy Rogers customers I hope others have taken the time to lodge complaints. We were sold unlimited not capped. Lets take a stand! Write your local news station too!

Can anyone suggest some alternatives to rogers and bell ?

so what we need exactly to do ?
everyone is angry however no one gave a solution...

any ideas ?

I agree that marketing something as unlimited is wrong but the reality is, no resource or service is unlimited - there's no such thing. As bit torrent continues to gain popularity and is embraced by more and more "average" users, the problem is only going to get worse. Suggestions that ISPs should simply "deal with it" are absurd. While their ways of addressing these issues may not be perfect or popular, the issues themselves aren't "made up".

To those suggesting that large "legit" files can be downloaded and bit torrent is also for legitimate reasons, I say, "that's true". Rolling papers can be used for tobacco too.

i think this is a good alternative:
http://www.get3web.com/highspeed/highspeedMenu.jsp?page=hsindex

if you sign up you can find that they prepared a field for rogers users :)

I would agree nothing is unlimited however I also have to agree that we were sold "unlimited". I don't recall the ads saying otherwise. No fine print anywhere saying "95gb limit per month". It is nothing more than a bait and switch tactic in the end. Torrents, bandwidth usage and monthly caps... is all just a bunch of BS. Instead of banning the very thing Rogers says is slowing they're network, they've simply made it so people will pay more. So now in some sense they are profiting from P2P. They are allowing it, they allow you up to a certain amount every month and anything beyond that you pay them extra for. Come on! This whole thing is a load of crap. Problem is Canadians love to whine and bitch about it until the hockey game comes on or dinner is ready - POOF! - All is forgetton. One solution is, and I agree with this as mentioned in another post, to write everyone with a complaint letter. Flood them. Draw attention to it and expose the deceptions in Rogers case. Do it! Do it now! The only thing that should need to happen on this webpage from here on out is for people to report back they've written complaint letters and to who.

why give the tickets away? even for charity. We should have a public burning of them.

Its all a lot of BS. For people just looking at webpages and email, your service is not dramatically impacted like they tell you it is, and just because that odd page doesn't load properly doesn't mean its all because of torrent downloaders. There are many factors that can impact why a specific page doesn't load.

Afterall, when I first switched from Rogers to Bell back in 1998, torrents (and even Napster) were not issues, and yet my service would drop out for days at at time. I ended up switching back to Rogers from Bell in 2000 when Bell's service would drop out for random hours. Somtimes, its just a penny-pinching greedy company trying to get the most revenue with the least expenses, even if that involves meeting current-day requirements of it's customers.

You know, instead of crying about it, cancel all your services. That's what I did.

As for alternatives to Bell and Rogers, Teksavvy seems like one of the larger players for DSL internet. (You want "dry loop" which uses the copper wires to your house and a few bucks goes to Bell)

Also downgrade all those little features that pad your Roger's bill. For Roger's Home Phone, the default is 2 features. Downgrade to 1 or zero features and save $4-7/month. If you have a Roger's wireless, cancel voicemail and call display. Use calling cards or skype for long distance. Start texting.

Also, when i called to cancel home phone, they offered to drop the system access fee *forever* (it was recently raised). So, if you're thinking about cancelling, they might offer you a sweet deal.

Rogers have lifted throttling torrents since they've introduced the 60gb limit.

first they were throttling, now they want people to download as much as possible since you'll be paying per gig over their 60gb limit.

Traffic shaping of some kind will always be necessary to ensure quality of service for voice over IP. As network congestion increases (and it's not like Rogers would have tons of extra capacity at any given time, so it's surely always congested) you have to prioritize time-sensitive traffic. Excessive latency may harm your torrenting efficiency, but it'll break up a voice connection.

Now, rather than privileging time-sensitive traffic, it seems that ISPs like to stomp on torrents. Easier to do, I guess, and it certainly favours the light users who happily pay for capacity that they don't consume. But even heavy torrent users would probably prioritize a DNS lookup over a peer-to-peer packet, because when you click a link in your Web browser you do like it to actually respond.

As for the outrage that some people are expressing over having any limits ever, by analogy with television: the Internet works differently. If you and I are downloading the same file, whether that's a movie or a Web page, we each get a copy. The server serves two copies, and the network flings two complete sets of packets (with the rare exception of IP multicast, a special case that wouldn't apply to you without your knowledge). That's why popular Web pages are slow to load. This is also why ISPs were rolling out Web proxies back in the late 90s (much to the annoyance of users when they turned out not to work as "transparently" as advertised). And just like then, surprise: the ISPs would be out of business if they actually had the capacity for everyone to be going full speed all the time. Infrastructure costs money just sitting around, and even the phone company doesn't have the equipment to support everyone talking on the phone at once, though there are no caps on local calls mentioned in their literature or on your bill. Dialup ISPs certainly never had the same number of modems and phone lines as they had users, or you'd have been paying, adjusted for inflation, $100/month for 14.4 kb/s.

I guess now corporations are now the official (re)writers of word definitions in the dictionary. For all you people griping about "they're hogging all the bandwith its not fair" and "people using more then reasonable" (specifically YOU Mike) you seem to forget what the word UNLIMITED means: no limit! Next time look up the meaning in Websters instead of reading the fine print on your Rogers bill. If you sell me an "unlimited plan" I expect to get what I pay for, re-defining "unlimited" by your corporate standards doesn't make it ok to stiff me, basically its a brash example of misleading and misadvertising. Thanks and enjoy your TTC-less week.

MUAHAHAHA!!! I WIN!!!

This is like a few years ago when I added extra available channels without my television customers knowing. And when they clicked to the channel, I charged their asses for Pay Per View!!!

Sure, I got my ass handed in court, but I still earned a good buck!

I don't care about Voice IP. That's not technology progressing! It's my business getting eaten by competition.

I will keep technology from advancing, and will be the richest man in the world!!!

canceling my service this week.. rogers just made themselves look so bad.

Come on people. Cancel your ROGERS service and pick up a smaller company that does not have a cap. Otherwise this will be the norm. As file sizes and speeds get faster why are ISP's providing slower and more expensive service?

This is just pure greed and you don't have to take it. I'm using a small company called ACANAC that has no cap and is much cheeper than ROGERS. There are many like it.

Complain all you want, nobody cares.

I suggest a rather more effective way of dealing with this problem of capping (if it is a problem for you).

Call up Rogers Customer Relations (not the customer service, as they can't do jack all for you) - 1-888-936-7283, and tell them you're considering switching over to 3Web (and I'd seriously consider switching to www.get3web.com as they're Rogers resellers anyway but without all the b.s. limits and at half the cost of Rogers service!), and ask the agent on the phone to try and give you a price match. They can give you 20% savings right off the bat, but if you're nice you might get some more discounts. How I got a Lite service at a price of Ultra-Lite, just so I don't feel like I'm back on dial-up? That's how.

You don't like your cell phone bill being so high? Again, call the customer relations and ask them to lower it for you. They will, depending on who you talk, what time of the day, etc. Regular customer service reps still keep wondering how in the world do I have a phone plan that I do at a price I do when I call in for some trivial changes and stuff...

i reached the shit limitation this morning that it notified me when i opened my internet browser. I feel so innocent because we, a housemate and me, share a internet service during the time we live together at a host's home. I'm using internet to surf internet, watch youtube, and online chatting. Quite rarely to download music or movies because i buy CDs and go to theaters. However, my housemate, a shit person, is not only playing online games, but also download TV series bundlly, never went to cinema for a film but grab from internet. We have been notified by the half of this month that we had used 75% allowance. How damn thing rogers just do! I ought to change the service or seperate from that shitted guy for a personal one.

I got Ultra-Lite last month (April'08). Website said first month free, $20.00 thereafter. I Could not put my Postal code in Roger's popup textbox before allowing me to see offer and sign-up page. I then went to a Rogers outlet: they said they could give me the internet offer there.

One week later: Got first invoice, said I owe $5.95 for the free month, third page contact said I will be paying $27.95 each month.

Next surprise: I'm a programmer, at work we use terago tower to dish (kind of like the old 'LOOK' network). Ultra fast and reliable. At home I only need Roger's Ulta-Lite, However the new 2008 Visual Studio Help files I need at home can only be downloaded and weigh in at 2 GB.

That's my ultra-lite limit !!! Rogers must die, period!

Slaves to Rogers:
1. Bell in my subburb can only get 256K for highspeed (distance to hub).
2. Tarego only served businesses.

I May have to go to 'dry loop' throgh acanac at 256k but unlimit bandwidth.

Finally, I remember when going to school was up hill both ways. Actually I remember Compuserve at $200 a month on dial-up. Then dial-up prices fell big time. $30-$20-$8.

Is there a conspiracy on high-speed. They first said high-speed was expensive because of optic lines and other crap. (Northern Tel killed that theory).

If high-speed ran on the same model as dial-up's cost history. Utra-high speed should only be about $8 today. What gives?

Have dual boot. Use XP then in May I booted to Vista partition, first time since Nov. 70 MG of updates another 50 MG for addition updates mostly .net framework. Two weeks within the monthly limit my 2GB was reached. The other bits went to AVG virus scanner forced upgrade and auto daily updates. Did maybe 80 mgs in actual browsing. Rogers rise the limit !

First off, for those that think because I can blow away the 60 GB cap easily that I share files.

Well guess what, I don't share squat!!

On my Mac I have 2 programs that use online storage & servers to accomplish data backup or recovery or in iDefrag's instance, defragment my drives.

This cap stuff is bullshit !