Rogers Internet - Complete Ripoff

[monhonsus]

I am pretty sure i am not the only person here that thinks the internet service of rogers is a COMPLETE RIPOFF. The bandwidth usage is very limited and once you go over the maximum limit, you have to pay for extra which is ridiculous. Teksavvy gives you more for less (300 gb for one month). I am quite unhappy to the internet service that rogers offer (as well as other companies like bell)

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[Pauly]

no one is holding a gun to your head to force you to go with rogers, theres pleanty of competors, you have the free democratic right to go with any company, you are cheap so you want to go with the cheapest, and you as a canadian have every right to do so.

what you dont have is the right to think rogers is the only company that will serve your needs and you do not have the right to smack talk them. 

[Fuzzy_Dunlop]

Pauly,

Your comments may be your own but they aren't very well-informed. Competition? What competition? There isn't any in Canada, which is precisely the problem. For the vast majority of customers in urban centres, the choice is Bell or Rogers. That's it. TekSavvy do try hard to offer a better alternative, but like the dozens/hundreds of other independent ISPs they are reliant upon the Rogers network for providing their Internet services.

In case you haven't been following the recent CRTC hearings involving Usage-Based Billing, there is a battle underway to try stop Bell from forcing usage-based billing charges on its wholesale customers (independent ISPs). Rogers would of course follow suit were this to pass. What it is is an underhanded attempt on their part to level the playing field by making their competitors' services identical to their own, thereby putting smaller ISPs out of business.

Both Bell and Rogers have been doing something similar (and arguably worse) for several years now: using packet shaping on their networks to throttle BitTorrent traffic, as well as FTP and VPN. TekSavvy, which offered unmetered Internet service to entice angry Rogers customers, has since had P2P throttling imposed on its own customers by Rogers.

[MichelR]

Are you sure about P2P throttling for Teksavvy customers?  Over on their public forums people claim there is no P2P throttling, and based on the kind of speeds they mention, I'd say they're right.

[phantomking]

Pauly your comments are quite rediculous, why would anyone think you're not affiliated with Rogers with statements like "you do not have the right to smack talk them".  We don't have the right to tell the facts? I didn't know we were living in a fascist society?  

I switched to Teksavvy and I have to say it was like a breath of fresh air.  

First off Rogers stuck me with an inferior SMC cable modem/wireless router that kept disconnecting from the rogers service and required reboots on a daily basis.  And the wireless signal was just as inferior.  I wanted to use my own Motorla cable modem but Rogers did not support it because they obviously rather have me pay the $8/month and keep me inconvienienced with the constant disconnects.  Let's not even mention the traffic shaping done with Rogers.  As far as I'm concerned the bandwidth advertised is false advertising because I have never even gotten close to it.

Switched to Teksavvy, no problem using my cable modem, never had any signal issues, awesome bandwith AS advertised. So it's not about being cheap, it's about a superior product for less cost buddy.

[FormerMember]

@phantomking and Fuzzy_Dunlop

Both of you are bang on. It is a shame that some people (not to mention any names)  just don't get it. I am still on a grandfathered Express plan with a D2 modem. Rogers refuses to give me the higher speed (18 Mbps) despite the fact that my Motorola surf board modem is very capable of  achieving this speed. And of course they will not give me the higher usage allowance (70 GB) despite the fact that usage allowance has nothing to do at all with what kind of modem you have. But there is no way I want to trade in my very reliable Motorola modem which gives me no problems whatsoever in return for a D3 gateway where I can expect all kinds of headaches. I too may be looking at Techsavvy when my current contract is up!

[MichelR]

I'm not too keen on moving to an independent ISP either because too much of the technical stuff is out of their hands and they have to rely on Rogers, Bell, etc... for a lot of it, and unsurprisingly supporting the competition is not their priority.  Too many stories of people being without service for several days when two companies are blaming each other.

I'm OK with the caps (I'm on Extreme) - even though I watch Netflix daily, I have yet to exceed my cap, but I can see that being a problem if you have more than one person in the house.  I'd rather have a higher cap anyway, if only so I don't have to worry about exceeding it at all.   I'd like the prices to go down a bit without having to beg for a deal though...

I haven't had any problems with that SMC gateway, though I'm using it in bridge mode and using my own D-Link router instead of the built-in one (wasn't impressed by it at all).  Another raised hand for a customer who'd prefer a modem-only D3 option.

[FormerMember]

@MichelR

Have you seen this article regarding Netflix? One of the reasons you are not exceeding your cap is that Netflix reduced the amount of usage for Canadians  "because many Canadian Internet service providers unfortunately enforce monthly caps on the total amount of data consumed." 

http://blog.netflix.com/2011/03/netflix-lowers-data-usage-by-23-for.html

As for the SMC,  Rogers is charging you $3 more per month (for rental) and the fact that you still have to use your own router defeats the whole purpose of the gateway modem! No question though that Rogers needs to come to their sense and allow a D3 stand alone modem!

[MichelR]

I'm aware of that, but I'm set up for maximum quality.  I tried a lower quality when I first started using Netflix in May of last year (I was on Express with the 60Gb cap) and wasn't crazy about it (I did pay top dollars for a high quality HDTV), so I set it to the best quality setting.  A 45-minutes episode in HD uses anywhere from 1.2 to 1.5Gb at that setting.  Movies can use even more (adjusting for duration, of course).

Yeah I forgot to mention the extra $3 being paid for nothing, which is another irritant.  If the independents can use standalone modems (I believe the DCM475 is the most popular offering by independent ISPs), why not us?  I understand Rogers wanting to limit the models they support, but a lot of people already have their own router, so it would be nice to have that option.

[FormerMember]

So, did you upgrade your Express to a higher tier for Netflix? That is part of the problem with the monthly bandwidth caps. If you wish to use services like Netflix and get the most out of it for your HDTV, you have to set it for the higher quality. To avoid going over your cap, you then have to pay even more to Rogers for a higher tier. They really are nailing you both ways - more money for a more expensive service and more money for the D3 modem which does not perform up to its advertised capabilities! No wonder monhonsus started this thread!