Rogers Shrinks Download Limits As Netflix Arrives 281
Meshach writes "Hot on the heels of Netflix coming to Canada, Rogers (one of the biggest ISPs in Canada) has shrunk download limits. 'As of Wednesday, new customers who sign up for the Lite service will be allowed 15 gigabytes, a drop from the 25 GB limit offered to those who signed up before July 21. Meanwhile, any new Lite user who goes over the monthly limit will have to pay $4 per GB up to a maximum of $50 — a spike from the previous $2.5 per GB surcharge.' Officially, there is no connection between the two events, but it seems an odd coincidence, especially when Rogers charges customers who exceed their bandwidth allowance."
Re:You Know (Score:5, Informative)
Boycott Rogers.
And switch to what, exactly?
They have a geographical monopoly across virtually all of Canada. If you live in an area serviced by them, you have a choice between Rogers and Rogers. Are you seriously asking people to give up entirely on the internet?
Re:Why is overflow so expensive? (Score:5, Informative)
I like how the overflow bandwidth costs over 500% wholesale costs.
I think you mean times, not percent. My host reserves the right to charge 4p/GB, which works out at about 6 Canadian cents (although they won't charge me if other users on the same connection don't go over their threshold and their upstream provider doesn't charge them). This is including their upstream provider's markup in their transit costs, so for a large ISP with peering arrangements the cost is likely to be closer to one Canadian cent per GB.
Of course, that's ignoring the cost of the last mile bandwidth. The caps are, at least in theory, picked as arbitrary numbers that prevent the last mile connection from being saturated.
Re:You Know (Score:3, Informative)
In the most extreme case, you can start-up your own cable company to fight Rogers. That's exactly what Aurora Cable Internet did, and they're still the fastest and cheapest cable Internet provider in Canada.
Switch to Teksavvy (Score:4, Informative)
I switched to Teksavvy Cable a month ago and it's awesome. No throttling, 200GB cap, and 10/1 speeds for $42. You can't match that with any other provider in Toronto.
$4/gb is highway robbery (Score:5, Informative)
This is obviously abusing a semi-monopoly to conduct price gouging, and the government should intervene.
Typical prices ISPs will pay for is the mere one-time cost of network equipment plus ~$25/Megabit/Mo, for a commitment to transfer data, the price is typically the same no matter how much data's transferred as long as the 95th-percentile traffic rate's not over the commit (95th percentile billing on a burstable link), otherwise known as $25,000/month per gigabit.
Sometimes an ISP might buy more bandwidth at different times of the day than others, but, in any case, they would do that because the cost is less, not more than the typical market rates.
Over a 1000Mbps backhaul, approximately 800 customers can be downloading 1 Megabit continuously 24/7, at an approximate avg cost to the ISP of $3125 per customer for that data, but in that case, 324000MB is transferred per customer on avg per month, resulting that each Megabyte transferred costs the ISP approximately $0.009 per megabyte.
Web hosting providers will typically charge $0.15 to $0.80 per GB per month on average.
Roger's "overage pricing" is like 4X the rate charged by even the most greedy of hosting providers.
Re:Time to jump ship (Score:2, Informative)
The problem is, there is almost nowhere to jump to in most areas. I live in Toronto, where Bell is pretty much the only other major player, and their rates are just as brutal as Rogers'.
Currently I'm with Acanac, who lease their lines from Bell. The speed isn't as good as it was with Rogers or Bell, but it's one of the few options left (the only other one I know is Teksavvy) for getting away with no bandwidth cap.
Re:You Know (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You Know (Score:1, Informative)
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: The purchase agreement was finalized and approved on June 12, 2008 and Aurora Cable Internet became part of Rogers Cable services.
Re:Time to jump ship (Score:1, Informative)
There is only one other option - Bell. Sure, there are small companies that buy and resell service from Bell, but they are forced to charge overages as well now, as per their contract with Bell.
(OK, so there is Telus in the west coast, but that's the same as Bell anyhow)
Re:You Know (Score:2, Informative)
And switch to what, exactly?
They have a geographical monopoly across virtually all of Canada. If you live in an area serviced by them, you have a choice between Rogers and Rogers. Are you seriously asking people to give up entirely on the internet?
Your center of the universe attitude clearly proves that you live in Eastern Canada. First of all, Rogers does not have any presence in Western Canada - we have Shaw and TELUS. Second, Bell provides DSL in your area in direct competition to Rogers. Complaining about a lack of options while citing only a single vendor as being the only viable option clearly demonstrates your ignorance on the topic.
Two plans changed (Score:3, Informative)
I am a Rogers customer. I like the speed and latency (Express plan), but hate the bandwidth cap. Normally, I don't go over it, but occasionally do so.
Here is a matrix of their plans [rogers.com].
Two plans changed for new clients signing up after July 21: Lite and Extreme. Lite is what the summary describes. Extreme was 95GB for $60 a month, now it is 80GB.
They want to make money in two ways: via their own video service, and by charging extra for bandwidth that people will use for Netflix.
Re:Time to jump ship (Score:4, Informative)
You'd think that slash-dotters would know better...
The smaller companies in no way resell Bell services. They provide their own. They do lease the last mile and transit to their centers..
Re:You Know (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure where this "If you're in an area with Rogers, there's only Rogers." Here in Alberta, we've got Shaw for cable, as well as Telus for... whatever they offer. As far as I know, any area with Rogers has at least one other competing cable company. So there's not just alternatives, there's equivalent alternatives.
Re:Why is overflow so expensive? (Score:2, Informative)
TekSavvy is not a Bell reseller. It uses Bell's last-mile connection and GAS (Gateway Access Service), but subscribes to its own backbone providers. It has also started laying its own fiber in a few small communities. For those with an interest in Canadian ISPs, it is very important to not spread the myth that TekSavvy is a Bell reseller, as this is what allows Bell to whine and complain to the government about how they were not allowed to charge TekSavvy per GB used by TekSavvy customers.
Unfortunately, the government has now approved Usage Based Billing (UBB), which will allow Bell to start charging TekSavvy per GB used, which essentially removes all need to go with an independent ISP altogether, even though TekSavvy was paying for its own backbones, separate from Bell.
Re:Why is overflow so expensive? (Score:5, Informative)
I had a friend in the coffee shop business and it cost him about $0.04 per POT for coffee.
I think it's neat how you still keep in touch with your friends who live in 1963.
Green coffee beans trade at wholesale prices of somewhere upward of one dollar per pound on international markets. Specialty, fair trade, organic, or higher-grade beans will cost more.
Let's assume that your friend is using a small, 50-ounce coffeepot. Figure that will take a couple of ounces of ground, roasted coffee. Two ounces at one dollar per pound is a bit more than twelve cents' worth of green beans. That assumes that there is no cost to roast the coffee, package the coffee, store the coffee, or deliver the coffee; it also ignores the fact that coffee is actually trading closer to $1.66 [tradingcharts.com], and that it will lose another fifteen percent [wikia.com] of its mass when roasted.
Heck, if the barista making the coffee earns $7.25 an hour (the U.S. federal minimum wage), then four cents pays her for a hair less than twenty seconds of work. I hope that you're not expecting anyone to spend time to wash those coffeepots and mugs. If the coffeemaker draws 1200 watts, and electricity is ten cents per kWh, then the ten minutes it took to brew the pot just burned through half our budget: 2 cents.
Toll roads bill based on how far you go! At the le (Score:3, Informative)
Toll roads bill based on how far you go! At the least the ticket based ones do the other ones are gate based so the rate is not the same all over the same systems.
It's the LITE service. (Score:3, Informative)
Not to take the side of the cable company, but the Lite service is the second from the bottom in terms of cost. It's not meant for the high-end bandwidth consumer. As the site says, that service is stated to be "Perfect for email, moderate web surfing, and sharing files." It's 3M/256k with a 15 gig monthly limit. However, if you plan to download several movies a day, this clearly isn't going to be enough for you. Thankfully, the company offers OTHER service options. The Ultimate plan, has 50/2 and a 175 gig limit, with only 50 cents per additional gig. Of course, you'll pay more for that plan, but I don't think anyone was seriously thinking that the second cheapest service plan should have completely unlimited bandwidth.
And if the ultimate plan isn't enough for you, there are business plans available which will offer even more, although it's likely going to cost more and the plans apparently aren't available to view on the site. But this is pretty typical for a cable company. I'm not sure what the complaint is supposed to be.
-Restil
It seems there is more... (Score:3, Informative)
My understanding is that both Rogers and Bell are also trying to persuade the CRTC to government regulated download limits of 60 GB for all ISPs. This of course would allow them to protect themselves from customers going to another ISP.
Also, before shrinking download limits, they've also doubled overlimit fees [stopthecap.com].
They've began to offer on ad supported on-demand video online [stopthecap.com], except this "free" video is still subject to their usage limits.