Rogers ultimately admitted the practice and promised to update its disclosure policies. Despite those promises, the CRTC found that the disclosures still only focus on the impact of its practices on uploading. The Commission told Rogers yesterday that:
Staff consider that in order to comply with TRP 2009-657, the discussion in the page titled Legal Disclaimer and the detailed discussion available on the network management policy web page should indicate that there are circumstances whereby the Rogers ITMP will also affect download speeds available to subscribers. Further, the detailed discussion on the network management policy page should clearly indicate which download applications might be affected in these circumstances and to what degree (i.e., the impact on download speeds should be indicated).
The letter added that it has received additional complaints about the practices and wants a response from Rogers by February 14, 2011 on “whether and how Rogers intends to modify its ITMP disclosures in compliance with TRP 2009-657.”
The net neutrality farce in Canada
And so Rogers updates it’s ITMP disclosures and comes fully clean. Then what? Rogers simply confirms what everybody already knows.
None of this changes the actual practices and Rogers’ network will still suck. Oh, right competition will fix that.
What competition? Bell? They suck just as badly. How about many of the other other DSL providers? Oh right, they are all victim of Bell’s network management practices and UBB.
The CRTC needs to grow some balls and finally admit that Internet is a utility without competition (might was well be a Crown monopoly) here in Canada and the operators need to be forced into providing net neutrality, not simply documenting their lack of it.
Webmaster
So the CRTC lets Bell impose caps on wholesalers to protect their media business, then they complain that Rogers isn’t adhering to net neutrality violation notifications?
Which is it CRTC, do you support net neutrality or not? I know it’s a rhetorical question given your actions but at least be consistent will you?
“The CRTC needs to grow some balls and finally admit that Internet is a utility without competition (might was well be a Crown monopoly) here in Canada and the operators need to be forced into providing net neutrality, not simply documenting their lack of it.”
Yeah, I don’t see that happening. It would require the CRTC to actually care about consumers.
Don’t worry, be happy
Hey, what’s all the fuss about net neutrality? So what if Rogers throttles their traffic and doesn’t tell you about it? You know it’s happening and that they all do it. Besides, it’s not like there’s much traffic we’re allowed anyway. Why worry about such a small amount?
Comcast in the U.S. allows 250 GB/month of data and warn you if you go over. Rogers allows 80 GB/month and fines you $1.50/GB when you go over. People hate Comcast. I’m sure Rogers knows what their customers think about them, but they simply don’t care.
As for the CRTC, who are hopelessly impotent in all matters (like the National Do Not Call List joke), they spew some platitudes occasionally to make it seem like they’re doing something, but nothing of any substance that actually benefits Canadians results.
I’m just waiting for Rogers to throttle Netflix and eventually Zip.ca streaming to protect Rogers’ Pay-Per-View and On Demand business, as if their miserly data cap doesn’t already do that. What will the CRTC say then?
“Dear Rogers, please disclose that you are being anti-competitive and aren’t playing nice. Say, wanna do lunch on Friday?”
Rogers customer service reps misled me
I have spent hours on the phone with Rogers reps over the past month trying to understand why my service is so slow.
They have maintained repeatedly that they do NOT throttle downloads (packet shape?) under ANY circumstances. They have told me that the p2p progams are throttling my download speed because Rogers is throttling my UPLOAD speed.
I have told the customer service reps that this can’t be true as the upload rate doesn’t seem that different from when I do it on other connections (my office), but the download rate is substantially slower when I’m at home.
So – not only is Rogers misleading the public on their network management policy web page, they are LYING to their customers!
remove the foreign ownership rule
Beyond the inefficiency of the CRTC there is also the foreign ownership rule, strangely one regulation that the CRTC seems to be very strong at enforcing.
The foreign ownership rule MUST be abolished. It does not matter were the money come from. What matters is whether it will service Canadians or not.
Rogers Customer
Not only does Rogers lie to their customers, they also treat them like numbers. Better pay that $80 bill on time or they will cut off your service!
Laissez-faire capitalism at its finest
With limited competition encouraged by our protectionist government, extremely weak consumer protection laws, and non-existent enforcement of the few laws and regulations that do exist, it’s no wonder companies like Bell and Rogers lie, confuse their customers, and have high and arbitrary pricing. There’s nobody on OUR side.
There are several applications out there that test for throttling already. I’m on Rogers and tried a few, but when it came to downstream, there is apparently too much “noise” to make a determination on whether or not my downstream has been throttled. Now knowing the fact I’m getting 5 – 6/KBPS download stream on bittorrent, and Rogers admission on throttling downstream speeds, should the CRTC then make sure that these ISP’s don’t interfere with apps, and testing sites/software? Should there not be a penilty imposed on that here?
Yeah, get rid of foreign ownership rules and SELL out Canada’s telecom industry to foreign multinationals. Don’t think the NDP would like that.
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@Mark: “Yeah, get rid of foreign ownership rules and SELL out Canada’s telecom industry to foreign multinationals.”
We are not forcing the Canadian telcos to screw their customers to such extent. It’s their own doing and if it unfolds in a way they won’t like, they won’t be able to point the finger to anyone but their boards and CEOs.
Net Neutrality will soon be meaningless once the measly usage caps approved by the CRTC gets implemented anyway. What use is equally fast speed if you could hit the caps in less than a day anyway. The telecoms could easily abide by the net neutrality rules and prevent the consumers from using competing services by reducing the caps whenever they feel like it, since the CRTC bends over to their requests anyway. Maybe when Canada becomes a 3rd-world in technological development will people finally do something about the farce that is the CRTC. But hey, look on the bright side, there’s be no worries whatsoever about Copyright issues soon enough because people won’t have the bandwidth allowance to download copyrighted stuff anymore!
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@Joe: “Maybe when Canada becomes a 3rd-world in technological development […]”
We’re already there, check what others are doing:
http://gigaom.com/2009/02/01/by-2012-koreans-will-get-a-gigabit-per-second-broadband-connection/
Basically instead of investing in improving the infrastructure we invest in throttling equipment.
Nap.
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@Mark:
Here for you a comparison between the most detested US ISP and Bell. I’m selecting the entry level internet packages from both:
http://www.bell.ca/shopping/en_CA_ON.Essential-Plus/DSLTIEPlusNCOONNewMass.details#tabCont1-tabs
http://www.comcast.com/Corporate/Learn/HighSpeedInternet/highspeedinternet.html?INTCMP=ILCCOMCOMHS162957
While the Comcast monthly cap is not obvious, it is 250GB/month, you can check here (I have intentionally selected a site very critical to Comcast):
http://stopthecap.com/2010/02/04/comcast-rebranding-itself-as-xfinity-xfinity-tv-xfinity-voice-xfinity-internet-at-an-xfinity-price/
Now compare with the Bell cap at 2GB/month. Which is a sad joke, as it is enough just for checking your e-mail, in text mode (graphics off).
I’d say that all CRTC employees should be mandated to use at home this Bell plan for the next 6 months. If the survivors still think that a 2 GB cap is a good idea, then they could keep this plan for the rest of their lives.
Nap.
TekSavvy
You can always swap your ISP to TekSavvy, I’m paying roughly $60/month but I get unlimited bandwidth with a 15Mbits downstream. Rogers won’t learn until they lose a lot of customers.
@Nap:
“…all CRTC employees should be mandated to use at home this Bell plan for the next 6 months.”
The trouble with that idea is that very few CRTC people may even use that much bandwidth, and probably wouldn’t experience the problems you’d expect them to. If they did use their accounts the way most of us do, they wouldn’t be so clueless to this stuff, as they obviously are.
@Brian:
TekSavvy is great, but their cable service is not available everywhere and I am not going with DSL since it will be subject to Bell’s traffic shaping rules just like Sympatico customers, (Bells words, not mine) – so no point there.
I am waiting for Teksavvy, Acanac, etc., to become available in my area then I’ll dump Rogers as fast as I can dial the phone – I am tired of Rogers shady billing practices, they have a great product but are just to dishonest. Seriously, I would not have thought someone could be in competition with Bell for most dishonest service but Rogers is really shooting for top of that heap.
Ah, the state of Canadian internet. God help us all.