Last week, Rogers ruffled a few feathers when it unveiled bandwidth changes to its broadband services. New customers who sign up for the Lite service will get 15 gigabytes of data rather than 25GB; while Extreme users will now get 80GB rather than 90GB.
The negative reaction from “enthusiastic” Web users was not surprising given they’re the ones using a lot of bandwidth to download or stream music, movies and games, as well as surf the Web and use social media services. For most of the population, the bandwidth changes will likely have little or no impact.
There are two angles to Rogers’ bandwidth tinkering. By reducing the amount of bandwidth, Rogers has an opportunity make more money by selling additional bandwidth to customers. Along with higher-speeds, this is how Rogers grabs more of our dollars.
More important is the fact that tiered broadband pricing is going to become a hard and fast reality. While bandwidth caps have been in place, they haven’t captured much attention because they’ve been fairly generous and few consumers bump up against the limits. But in reducing bandwidth caps, it seems likely Rogers could be moving to a pricing structure in which bandwidth plays a more important role.
For consumers, it means the speed of their Internet connection will no longer be the only consideration. When selecting and paying for broadband service, consumers will have to cough up for speed and bandwidth. These tiered plans have been embraced by cablecos and telcos around the world such as BT. In North America, however, speed has been the name of the broadband game but with penetration rates getting pretty high, broadband players need new ways to generate more revenue.
In other words, we’re probably moving from an all-you-can-eat market to a pay-to-play market. Given there’s little competition in the broadband market and that consumers are using more online services, the size of your Internet bill is poised to increase.
I understand tiered bandwidth, what I don’t understand is why we keep getting less and less for more money, especially with Rogers.
I used to have three of my four communications / entertainment services with Rogers and now I refuse to be a Rogers customer because of incorrect billing and because the price of the same service kept going up with no additional value added.
And why can an independent DSL provider give me no download cap and great speeds for a flat rate that’s cheaper than Rogers?
Rogers has been gouging the Canadian consumer for over a decade on their Internet bills. In the last 5 years, there have been numerous companies offering DSL that have sprung up. And now, with Voice-over-IP (VOIP) phone service which you can get independent from your internet provider, it’s really a no-brainer to go with a much cheaper DSL service and get rid of pricey Rogers cable internet as well as your home phone line.
The best service for VOIP at the moment is freephoneline.ca. There are numerous DSL internet providers out there but I have seen nothing but excellent QoS from Acanac.ca.
Some of the less tech-savvy customers out there wonder how can you get DSL without a wet phone line. Pretty much all DSL internet providers will provide a dry-loop service (this means that you want DSL internet without having an active phone line) for around $8/month.
So, you should be paying $25 for DSL + $8 dry loop = $33/month for internet and phone. Compare that to what you’re paying today. And of course, there is no bandwidth cap.