Rogers Increases Broadband Pricing, and I'm OK with That...

Hrm… I just got a notification in the mail. My internet pricing is going up by $2.00/month…

I’m actually not sure how I feel about that. Sure, the price is going up, but some of the features are improving, as are the speeds and data transfer limits….That being said, I’ve been happy with my *Express* package, which gave me 60 GB of data transfer and speeds of up to 24 Mbps/ 1Mbps…. I’ve had a Rogers discount, so my totaly price, all in was $57/month (including the cable modem)…..

I don’t have Netflix (yet), but I’m wondering what streaming TV would do to my data transfers… I work from home 90% of the time, so reliable and speedy internet is important to me. 

The one thing that Rogers has done that I’ve been waiting almost 10 years for someone to do is offer a dashboard where you can jack up your bandwidth requirements on demand….Is that wirth $2.00? That’s hard to say as well. I guess time will tell….

Do I begrudge Rogers a $2.00 price increase? No. Rogers employs about 30,000 Canadians, and has 11 Canadian Call Centres.

That’s 30,000 people who are (generally) making a very good wage and make up a very good tax base for Canada. I want those people to keep happily chugging along. 

Without a large tax base of people with good jobs, Canada would quite quickly and easily slide into the problems that the US is facing with debt and social services. A huge component of the US middle class —- you know, those people who actually paid a lot of taxes, disappeared over the past few years. It’s doubtful that they’re ever going to come back (which is why the US is now eyeballing the uber-wealthy). 

I want to keep all the Canadian companies healthy, and if $2 is the cost of that, that’s OK with me.

Switching from Bell Expressvu to Rogers Cable: What you NEED to know

A few weeks ago, The Wiz and I decided to finally break free from the chains of satellite TV and ordered cable TV.  Too many times had we been let down by fuzzy programming due to inclement weather. Too many times had the PVR pooched a recorded movie.

Last week was the BIG CHANGE OVER. The snappy Rogers fellow came, he disconnected, he reconnected and voila. Cable TV in all its glory. Ahem….

If you are a hard core Bell Expressvu user, you do NOT EVER want to switch over to Rogers Cable. Not yet, anyways. You don’t realize it, but you have become spoiled by the Bell Programming Guide. Trust me. It’s got a great HD resolution, it lets you see 3 hours of programming in the future on one screen, it lets you see 7 channels of shows at a glance. You don’t think these things are valuable, until they are gone……

The Rogers Interactive Program Guide (IPG) is from 2004. It doesn’t display well on an HD tv, it doesn’t display well with any resolution better than 760. It doesn’t let you do any searching for programs, all you can do is browse by day. You don’t realize how sucky this us until you want to search for a program and have to browse through 30,000 shows that start with the same letter as the program in need….

This isn’t a new problem. People have been complaining about this for years. Funny, in 2004, it wasn’t a show stopper. It’s amazing what 6 years of innovation (or lack thereof) can do. The IPG feels like it should be running on a 386 with Windows 3.1 in order to be viewed correctly. Funny, the image to the left sort of looks like this, if you have a standard definition TV that is smaller than 36 inches. If you have anything else, the fonts are completely distorted, the colours are off and the size is ridiculous.

There are a few other VERY significant problems:

1. There’s no skip ahead button on the Rogers Remote. You know the button, it’s yellow on the Bell remote, and it is your best friend. It gives you the power to skip ahead 30 seconds. It’s the commercial button :-) Rogers actually makes you view everything, albeit at 3times the speed.
2. Rogers added a marketing screen to the IPG, so now you have to hit the guide button twice to get to the guide.
3. There are some wickedly ridiculous buttons on the Rogers Remote, a button to take you to Rogers on Demand… duh.

We lasted all of 45 minutes before we looked at each other and said at the same time “I can’t do this”.

Twenty minutes later, the Rogers boxes were all packed up, and the calls were made to Rogers to cancel (you get a 30 day guarantee), and we were lucky enough that we tried this before our Bell cancellation had been activated, so we were safe on both sides.Turning on the TV and the Bell PVR, we breathed a collective sigh of relief.

I’m sure that eventually Rogers will improve their IPG, (maybe), but right now, there are SO MANY benefits to the Bell Service, we simply couldn’t overlook them in favour of avoiding imclement weather problems……

Caveat Emptor!

Update on Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 10:37PM by jules

There’s been an added, hilatrious twist to this adventure….

I’ve been charged $130 for the priviledge of having the Rogers service for 24 hours.

:-D

The Rogers VISION

I wish I had some indepth witty details, a good scoop, or even gossip. But Mark tells it all, and there isn’t all that much to tell yet, unless you want to read the press release. William Shatner helped launch Rogers’ New VISION…. Live Video on cell phones, (aka mobile video calling services) and yes, that includes video calls from your cell.  The Man of Silver has more details, and even a snappy photo of Capt’n Kirk in a demo. Check the Rogers’ site for their launch info…

I mentioned it to someone a few minutes ago, and their first question: how the heck are you going to hold the phone to your ear, and not get a close up of your eardrums?

It’s not an unreasonable question… :-)



Technorati Tags: Rogers VISION, William Shatner, Mobile Video Calling

Ted Rogers Says No To Allstream...for now

Quashing a suggestion that he might bid for MTS Allstream (TSX:MBT), he noted that investment analysts tend to favour acquisitions over large increases in capital spending but “Allstream would cost a huge amount of money, and for a fraction of that - but still a substantial number in terms of capital expenditures - we will go in the business with the newest technologies.”

Rogers Communications triples Q3 net to $154M; stock to split, dividend up

Hmmm….. It’s like no one wants to Allstream to the Prom. She’s standing there looking all cutesy, but no takers.

technorati tags:allstream, Rogers, Prom