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Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

Earache
I plan to stick around

Let me preface this by saying, I, in no way dislike Rogers as an ISP, and am I, in no way advertising for other providers.  I have no issues with it (besides the topic at hand), and I would like to open a dialogue with Rogers employees and the community to get a better understanding of what customers want and what can actually be provided (and reasoning for it).  Also note that different providers, provide services in different areas, they do not cover all of Canada, and your location may dictate which service providers are available, therefore when discussing this topic, when I refer to a company, I'm referring it independently of services available in a given location.

 

I would like to have a discussion regarding upload bandwidth.  For as long as I can remember, us Canadians, have had the one of the worst upload bandwidth, which to me in 2017 is not acceptable any more.  Many people have begun careers at home (whether for a business or entrepreneurial) or even just brick and mortar businesses.  For a brick and mortar store, many offer free Wi-Fi to their client which ends up saturating their bandwidth.  For stay at home careerists, they depend on upload bandwidth for various tasks, such as (and not limiting to): video conferencing, transfer files whether to clients or web/file servers and etcetera. 

 

 

According to Speedtest.net Report, no provider is capable of anything over 30 Mbps.  As this isn't necessarily true as Bell is now offering 100Mbps on their Gigabit Fibe plan (which might I add is cheaper than Rogers offering).  I also know that there are smaller providers such as Beanfield that offer 1Gbps upload bandwidth (what the actual result is, I cannot say, but apparently it is close to advertised).  There is another provider in Muskoka, Ont, that offers the identical connection bandwidth to Beanfield (both are less expensive than Rogers/Bell, and have a smaller footprint as well).  

 

Seeing how 2 small providers that are turning a profit with such a small foot print, I don't see how the bigger (see wealthier) internet providers, provide lackluster upload speeds.  It may be for the fact there is more equipment needed therefore costs will go up or there are to many people on the network, but if smaller providers can achieve surely bigger more successful ones can as well.  

 

Rogers offers 50Mbps upload to business, but some providers, offer identical packaging to businesses and consumers, the price may vary as business will get static IPs, dedicated lines and/or service agreements.  In a CBC article from 2014 Why internet upload speed in Canada lags behind world average, Rogers stated that upstream usage only accounted for 13% of all traffic on its network and they expected it to increase 40% year over year.  This was 3 years ago, if I remember correctly Rogers internet service plans were called Hybrid Fibre and the fastest connection was 60/10. 

 

One of the limitations I believe is the infrastructure itself, as many cities in Canada capable of being developed as the costs are high, but that should not deter a higher upstream. Personally I would prefer the Canadian government to spend money on developing communications in Canada rather than spending money on other infrastructure projects (that will amount to money wasted).  Rogers experienced an 11% growth in Internet revenue in the 2016 Annual report (seen here),  Cable (Internet/TV) accounts for 25% of total revenue while, Business Solutions accounts for only 3%, yet according to the CBC article mentioned above, "Part of the problem lies in how telecommunications services have historically been sold in Canada. Many new innovations – think BlackBerry – have generally been aimed at businesses first, with mainstream consumers eventually following along," why would the focus be on business first when the gains in consumer products are higher?

 

According to BCE, Rogers racing to new frontier in high-speed Internet, Rogers has completed it's DOCSIS 3.1 upgrade in Toronto (no word on other cities/municipalities), and the cost to achieve this was roughly $250-300/home (est by Desjardins Securities Inc).   BCE (Bell) is currently investing $1.14B in fibre services in Toronto and according to Barclay's Capital the cost is $400-700/home using aerial infrastructure (using hydro poles to run fibre vs burying underground).  With DOCSIS 3.1 downstream capacity is 10 Gbps, while upstream is 1-2 Gbps.  In full duplex (which I believe is not the case with Rogers), upstream capacity is 10 Gbps.  The difference between BCE and Rogers, gigabit networks is one is cable the other is fibre.  Fibre will always be faster and more efficient as outside interference does not affect it, and it is able to travel further distances.  BCE is offering gigabit speeds with 70% more upstream for a cheaper price, and much more future proof with their fibre network.  

 

What I propose is Rogers to offer a much higher upstream either to match competitors (BCE) or surpass them as many Canadians are doing more on the internet, and not just downloading "stuff."  Sure there are people that will abuse it but provisions can be made to thwart that.  Many Canadians are now using cloud storage and moving large amounts of files currently can be painful (I have had to upload gigs of data to clients/co-workers), more data is being shared then ever before and will only grow as more people being switching from physical data to digital (paper vs computer). 

 

Thank you for listening/reading and I hope other Rogers customers will agree and we can get a good discussion going on here.

 

 

***Added Labels***

83 REPLIES 83

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

DeanLubaki
I plan to stick around

@Datalink, sorry, but you completely missed my point.
No one is debating the merits of cable over fibre, or cares about Bell cherry picking the market or Bell Fibre users not liking their modems.
My point is Rogers has FTTH in a lot of places but uses cable instead. If you do not find yourself in a place where there is FTTH you are to be excluded from my point because it doesn't apply to you.
It's frustrating to have FTTH but see cable limit your speeds. Maybe Rogers doesn't have a fibre modem, but they should still think about the people who have FTTH, even if they are a minority (by the way I live in the Toronto South Core, and we are not a minority in that area).

Also, you say that the minority of users probably do not justify the costs for Rogers. I do not think so. Remember when Bell Fibre had like 10 users and Bell still had a whole different customer service department for these 10 people? They did so because they have a commitment to Fibre. Rogers may not be actively working on FTTH for everyone like Bell, but it will naturally happen at the pace new constructions happen in Toronto.

 

What I'd like is to have a response from Rogers.

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth


@DeanLubaki wrote:

@Datalink, sorry, but you completely missed my point.
No one is debating the merits of cable over fibre, or cares about Bell cherry picking the market or Bell Fibre users not liking their modems.
My point is Rogers has FTTH in a lot of places but uses cable instead. If you do not find yourself in a place where there is FTTH you are to be excluded from my point because it doesn't apply to you.
It's frustrating to have FTTH but see cable limit your speeds. Maybe Rogers doesn't have a fibre modem, but they should still think about the people who have FTTH, even if they are a minority (by the way I live in the Toronto South Core, and we are not a minority in that area).

Also, you say that the minority of users probably do not justify the costs for Rogers. I do not think so. Remember when Bell Fibre had like 10 users and Bell still had a whole different customer service department for these 10 people? They did so because they have a commitment to Fibre. Rogers may not be actively working on FTTH for everyone like Bell, but it will naturally happen at the pace new constructions happen in Toronto.

 

What I'd like is to have a response from Rogers.


Just a heads up, the coax cable isn't limiting the speeds. The Rogers Network is based on DOCSIS, DOCSIS is the limiting factor, not Coax Cables.

 

Rogers business model is different than Bell's in the sense that the products Rogers offers are available to everyone in the Rogers service area. You can get the most basic plan or top tier gigabit and the experience is the same for all customers. With Bell depending where you live you can only get DSL, other areas VDSL, and other areas Fibre. So depending where you live with Bell you might only get bandwidth starved DSL, with Rogers you can get any package, the entire cable footprint supports all the packages. 

 

 

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

DeanLubaki
I plan to stick around

Well today, I decided to switch back to Bell!

They offered me symmetrical unlimited Gigabit internet + basic TV for $73, no contract and guaranteed price for 3 years.

Bell understood the competition from Beanfield and Rogers. Too bad Rogers couldn't get off the DOCSIS and fully embrace the FTTH in my condo.

Will still remain a Rogers wireless customer thought!

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

JohnBeaudin
I'm a senior contributor

@DeanLubaki

 

If FTTH is available to you then yes enjoy it my friend.

 

For most of us.. like myself I have the choice between Rogers Gigabit speed or Bell 6 MBS internet and 0,5 mbs upload so it's a no brainer for me to stay on Rogers Gigabit package. Always pick what is the best out there friend and eventually Rogers will step up with D3.1 Upload and then Full Duplex but why wait since you're already in a FTTH zone.

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

I have to 100% agree with JohnBeaudin.

When its an option, its a great option to choose.
But I think its still a very SMALL % of people that have FTTH.
I think the FIBE spread (which is still only FTTN like rogers), probably still only has a 50% coverage over their area.. and like JohnBeaudin said lots of places only having 6mbps DSL as their only bell option..
Rogers is pretty much the only DECENT option.

 

One thing to remember as well, some of that infrastructure as well, like those fiber runs.. are probably OWNED by Bell.. so no one else can jump on them (other than a 3rd party reseller once that is allowed?).  Rogers wants to do FTTH they have to run all their own fiber as well.
Again.. If they can get close to there eventually with D3.1, on the existing infrastructure.. saves a ton of money on installation.  (Laying fiber is CRAZY expensive.  At our work, we paid almost 20k to get a fiber run about 300m from the box, under a street and a driveway, to our building)

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

DeanLubaki
I plan to stick around

The thing is you underestimate how long it will take before Bell deploys the fiber.
Today, they announced that all of Toronto now have Fibre.
If your house doesn't have FTTH, they will install it upon subscription.

They also promised speeds up to 5Gbps even for residential, by next year

https://mobilesyrup.com/2018/04/05/bell-announces-all-fibre-optic-network-is-now-live-in-toronto/


Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

JohnBeaudin
I'm a senior contributor

@DeanLubaki

 

That's very good news for Toronto and the GTA, however for the rest of the canada it will take at least 10 years to finish the rest of Canada.

 

I live in New-Brunswick, and my town Lameque doesn't have FTTH but the next town just a little bit bigger than mine Shippagan has FTTH since 2013.

 

My guess is Atlantic Canada will be the last place they will focus FTTH deployment , They will Finish Ontario and Quebec , probably about 5 years, and then within 10 years they will finish FTTH deployment in Atlantic Canada.

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

BS
I'm a senior advisor
And that would suggest that bell just got access to the whole orchard of cherries in Toronto. They said six months ago they would meet that goal in April this year. They just did.

And my own town also has it on all the poles now and in access points on every corner and some runs to homes already in. So not cherry picking anymore. While they cherry picked the large buildings the backbones went into all the neighbourhoods at the same time and built a huge revenue stream to finish the rest. Now if the CRTC can finalize the wholesale rates on the bell wholesale to third parties you can even get it from any company that wholesale. CRTC turned back offer of 117 dollars per month for the speeds above fttn.

The race is definitely on and in Toronto anyway the Blue guys are now officially winning. Me thinks bell is not far from being ftth on their whole platform. Rogers will need to start rethinking their ads.

For now though we live with whatever we have and can afford.

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

JohnBeaudin
I'm a senior contributor

@BS

 

My guess for FTTH on their whole platform

All Ontario and Quebec (Within 2023)

All Atlantic Canada ( Within 2028)

 

I am very confident it will the margin for error will be minimal but let's see!

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

DeanLubaki
I plan to stick around

Most of the Canada lives in Ontario and Quebec, so it makes sense that they be the first 😉


@JohnBeaudinwrote:

@DeanLubaki

 

That's very good news for Toronto and the GTA, however for the rest of the canada it will take at least 10 years to finish the rest of Canada.


 

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

JohnBeaudin
I'm a senior contributor

@DeanLubaki

 

Yes of course it make senses, but Rogers will still be able to compete for a few years outside of the GTA, they have a good 5 years to put everything in place. If they fall behind then well.. Bell will be far ahead.

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

BS
I'm a senior advisor

There is another factor in play here - with speeds of up to 5 GB/seconds, given that Toronto and Montreal and Quebec are major corporate centres, and even outside Toronto, we are seeing small software and data companies opening that are going international quickly on small locations in the outreaches of Toronto, there is a huge medium sized business and corporate demand for faster uploads and downloads of data - an example, MacKiev software is a small educational software company in the states - they are now distributing Family Tree maker all over the world, and they have contracted from their branch offices to link into Amazon services and distributed servers around the world (they have distributed servers to support high demand upload and download of large family tree and media (mine is over 100 GB of data - imagine uploading that to Ancestry and to FTM servers over 10 Mbs upload - I am at over 24 hours to upload that data - 3 days at times when connections aren't stable or latency is off.

 

I turn my computer on set up the upload (fortunately, I don't have to do it often) and I was beta testing for a year with them, so I was uploading frequently - turn over time on next beta was 7 days, so I did not get a lot of testing time when I had to do a new upload.

 

So my point is that with these major centres, with companies opening up in areas of residential settings (small office in a plaza) as it meets desires in Ontario to bring work and homes closer to reduce transit demands over time.

 

With these kind of speeds available, I can see Bell getting a real step up on the corporate side of things, and by having the whole Toronto and soon GTA covered, that is a huge influx of cash flow to speed up the upgrades, so I think that your prediction is very consertive - definitely major centres across Canada, I suspect we will be seeing them covered very quickly - an example, is a large amount of Collingwood in Ontario is now covered and allowing for expansion of industry and small tech business in the areas, and introduction of distributed computing centres.

 

The other thing that will have to begin to be concerning for Rogers is that their announced move to the new model with 500 connections to the CMTS rather than 1000 (if I recall that correctly), and at the moment their pass over rate of houses connected homes has been increasing - (i.e., less connections in a residential area on average), now in Toronto, anyone can get the improved speed down and up, while Rogers is limited right now to at best generally 30 up in Toronto - this is becoming a real race now.

 

And I suspect that Bell, if they can get a significant increase on their customer base, and there is also incentive for them to get more wholesale market by getting final agreement on distribution rates to the wholesalers on the full fibre to the home, with these discounted rates, this may create problems for Rogers goal to double the number of residential consumers and reducing the passby rates to support the new model with increased upload speeds.

Interesting times.  Rogers reports show they have lots of cash flow, so they may have to start going more agressively.

 

Bruce

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

BS
I'm a senior advisor

Well, actually, you will find that there are lots of places outside the GTA that are pretty much ready to go for Bell.

 

The pressure just went up on Rogers, but they know that I am sure.

 

Bruce

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

DeanLubaki
I plan to stick around

Exactly @BS! 

What's funny is a few days ago a few of you were like "nah it'll take forever until Bell covers a significant portion of the population" and they just did...
Rogers has already lost the speed race because Bell can easily offer 5 Gbps symmetrical and announced plans to do so.
Rogers could have easily prevented some people from switching by offering true fibre to the people who already have FTTH. Too bad for Rogers.
Oh and by the way, my entire condo floor is also switching after they received the same offer as I did by mail!

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

BS
I'm a senior advisor

@DeanLubaki  Exactly, I like you have watched the nay sayers - I have not been one of them - I have watched FTTH go into Collingwood, be provisioned for the villages in Grey county, new neighbourhoods outside of Port Perry into the really small new builds in the country be provisioned to the door, they just have to bring the backbone in and last time I was talking to my in laws - that is just waiting for the runs to go up to Lindsay and Peterborough areas and new subdivisions in more rural areas around those towns and cities, so it is well outside the GTA - Hamilton and Stony creek is on it from telephone poles - and they own the poles, they just had to run a fibre from the pole to the house demarc on those, no digging, just a short cable run and connection to the home.

 

Along one of our major streets, the fibre backbone has been running across the poles east to west all the way across durham region on every major east west run of poles - 4 major streets, and they began running the home runs and building runs last year.  Our neighbourhood in Whitby is ready, just the last run, the cables are sitting in the access plates at every corner sidewalk, they just bring one of those snake like core drillers.  The junction points in front of the homes are being changed over with every install of a new customer, ready to go Fibre once they do the street run.

 

I am retired, so I walk over to the Fibre box up the street and talk to the techs and they give me the info of what they are doing.

 

And yes, my daughter two years ago in an apartment in Scarborough, they ran the fibre up the outside walls, drilled into each apartment, and then offered packages to the first 100 - almost all of them took it, and the Rogers infrastrure cables in the building is aging and they can't get stable connections on their old installs - Rogers has to do the whole building to improve it.

 

this is  Midland and Sheppard area, every building in that area new and old was set up and ready to go by the end of last year - and I suspect the infusion of cash flow has allowed them to excellerate their rollouts.

 

Rogers is up against the wall in most of Southern Ontario at the moment, Ottawa, and most of our smaller towns are on Cogeco and other companies and Rogers doesn't have a presense in general outside the Golden Horseshoe.

 

Not that I want Rogers to fail, they won't, but maybe they will get off their high horses and the competition can really kick in on speed, and we can begin to choose on what we want, and cost.

 

Guess they may soon lose the Ookla fastest speed mentions if they are not careful. 

 

Entertaining to watch as we consider moving out of a Rogers town, and leave completely, or I go wholesaler because I just feel like working with a smaller personalized company with a strong reputation and I can just walk in their door and talk to any staff member and they will know who I am and I can talk directly face to face to the installers.

 

And along with this, the limitations on Fibre to number of boxes resulting on slow downs in the home will disappear, so Rogers won't be able to claim that 8 tuners versus 4 anymore, and the whole shared arguments will disappear too.

 

I see the best part is the push to speed that will benefit small IT and data centres and distribution centres across Canada as this technology rolls out.  that is where the money is for all the companies, and we as residential benefit too.

 

Rogers - your turn.

Bruce

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

JohnBeaudin
I'm a senior contributor

Bell is definitely already ahead in the major markets, let's see what will be Rogers's next move to stay competitive.

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

RyzenFX
I'm a reliable contributor

Bell is really turning on the heat with Rogers, especially since they just announced to bring FTTH to another 1.3 million households and businesses to the GTA/905 area by the end of 2018.

 

I'm starting to be a bit skeptical of Rogers' plans to migrate to FDX DOCSIS because there is a growing number of time-sensitive (latency) applications. With DOCSIS, latency and bandwidth can be easily impacted by many sources of ingress. With, FTTH (GPON), there are virtually no sources of it ingress. 

 

How will FDX DOCSIS remain competitive with GPON in terms of latency? It's clear that FDX will remain competitive with bandwidth, but how will it remain competitive with GPON with latency? At that point, it seems clear to me that FTTH is the real winner.

 

Over the past year, there has been a huge surge in the demand for more upload speeds. More areas are seeing congestion, more node splits need to happen, more fibre needs to be brought in. It looks that Rogers will be lacking behind in upload speed, but with increased competition, I'd like to see Rogers to lead the cable industry again by being aggressive in it's FDX DOCSIS roll out, especially if it wants to remain competitive with Bell.

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

JohnBeaudin
I'm a senior contributor

@RyzenFX

 

FTTH was always a clear winner, the only thing was that it was only available to a small footprint, however it seems like Bell is really working on fixing that at least in the GTA.

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

JohnBeaudin
I'm a senior contributor

I wonder why Rogers is so shy about D3.1 Upload, would be nice if we have any updates, I was expecting them already rolling it out in the Toronto area.

 

In time like these I really miss @RogersDave , he was the only one providing us with updates on that matter.

 

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

DeanLubaki
I plan to stick around

@RyzenFX yup. Theses days, it's not all about speed but also latency.
I'm not sure Rogers and their ~30ms ping (and that's at my place with FTTH that is converted to cable) can compete with Bell's ~5ms ping on FTTH.

Re: Let's talk Upstream Bandwidth

DeanLubaki
I plan to stick around

The only thing missing for Bell thought is a platform like the Comcast X1.
The dream would be to be able to use the Comcast X1 features on a third-party hardware like the Apple TV

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