Rogers Lowers Bandwidth Limits, Increases Overage Fees

Ahh, the company I love to hate has given me yet another reason to continue hating. In the past, I mentioned that Rogers (Canadian do-all media deliverer) intercepts your Web searches to go to its own ad-ridden search in lieu of whatever your browser’s default search engine choice might be, and of course, who could forget the debacle that occurred when the iPhone first came to Canada?

Well, there are plenty of reasons I dislike Rogers, but I couldn’t possibly tackle them all without maxing out our database’s storage. So, I’ll just talk about the most recent issue… where the company has decided to lower the already-low bandwidth limits for brand-new customers. That means, going forward, each package will be giving new customers less bandwidth to deal with for the exact same price.

Speaking of price, here’s a rather priceless quote from Rogers itself, with it explaining that the move occurred to, “reflect the changing nature of customer’s online behaviour“. Why yes, of course. Customers are downloading more than ever, so the natural progression is to lower the bandwidth limits. At the same time, the company is boosting its overage fees as well. Before, each GB over your limit would incur a $2.50 fee on your bill, but that’s now been changed to $4, up to a maximum of $50.

I happened to have just moved from Rogers as an ISP to another (Bell Aliant) that offers me half the download speed (5Mbit/s down, .5Mbit/s up) for a bit less cash, but with unlimited bandwidth. And yes, this is one of the rare ISP’s where unlimited actually does mean unlimited (the company doesn’t talk about this in its marketing, but the operators you deal with on the phone are more than happy to discuss it).

Bell Aliant sure isn’t without fault either, but compared to Rogers, the unlimited bandwidth aspect is far more attractive to me than faster speeds (I went over my bandwidth limit with Rogers more often than not). To make this entire change by Rogers even stranger, it’s that it has happened at the exact same time Netflix moved into Canada. Rogers clearly saw the opportunity to milk its customers for all its worth. It can candy coat its claims as much as it wants, but the regular consumer isn’t going to fall for it.

Canada needs more ISP/telephone/cable competition, and fast.

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.