Rogers Hi-Speed Internet
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Rogers Hi-Speed Internet is a
broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...
Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
in
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, owned by
Rogers Communications Rogers Communications Inc. is a Telecommunications in Canada, Canadian communications and media company operating primarily in the fields of mobile phone operator, wireless communications, cable television, telephony and Internet access, Intern ...
. Rogers previously operated under the brand names Rogers@Home, Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet, WAVE, and Road Runner in
Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region ...
. It is currently the second largest Internet provider in Canada, after
Bell Internet Bell Internet, originally and frequently still called Sympatico, is the residential Internet service provider (ISP) division of BCE Inc. As of May 3, 2012, Bell Internet had over 3 million subscribers in Ontario and Quebec, making it the large ...
by customer count.


History


1990s: Early years

Rogers' started high speed internet service as a to aid
remote work Remote work, also called work from home (WFH), work from anywhere, telework, remote job, mobile work, and distance work is an employment arrangement in which employees do not commute to a central place of work, such as an office building, ware ...
ers. The Rogers' cable home Internet network was first launched on November 28, 1995 and was available to about 16,000 homes in
Newmarket, Ontario Newmarket ( 2021 population: 87,942) is a town and regional seat of the Regional Municipality of York in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is part of Greater Toronto in the Golden Horseshoe region of Southern Ontario. The name stems from the ...
. The service was branded WAVE. It is
North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
's first cable Internet service.


2000s: Growth and relationship with Yahoo!

By the year 2000, the service was rebranded to Rogers@Home and availability was extended to more cities in
Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...
and
British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...
. In 2004, Rogers partnered with
Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...
to offer Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet to its members. This included service offers unlimited e-mail storage, plus access to Premium Yahoo! Services at no charge, including a
Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and professional ...
PRO account. Customers with websites previously hosted by Rogers were offered the option of transferring to ca.geocities.com addresses. (Unike regular GeoCities websites, these were ad-free for existing accounts, although those for new customers had drop-down ads.) All such websites were discontinued with the closure of
GeoCities Yahoo! GeoCities was a web hosting service that allowed users to create and publish websites for free and to browse user-created websites by their theme or interest. GeoCities was started in November 1994 by David Bohnett and John Rezner, and w ...
on 27 October 2009. Although still partnered with Yahoo!, Rogers dropped Yahoo! from its services name in 2008. In mid-2009, Rogers discontinued giving free Flickr Pro accounts to all Rogers customers and switched all accounts to the free version while allowing old pictures and videos to be stored even though it was over the allowed limit. Rogers Mail accounts continue to be provided by Yahoo!.


2010-present: DOCSIS 3, fibre to the home (FTTH) and price increases

On January 16, 2012, customer advocacy blog Stop The Cap! reported that Rogers increased the price of all its cable Internet services by $2, except for Lite and Ultra-Lite which remain unchanged. Rogers blames its slightly higher cap limits and its SpeedBoost technology as reasons for the price increase. A customer, however, was quick to point out that the cable company "introduced 'SpeedBoost' as a 'free' feature which we are now apparently/effectively going to pay more for". A few days later, Stop The Cap! reported that DOCSIS 3.0 customers would benefit from a speed and usage increase. By February 21, Express speeds of up to 12 Mbit/s would now be up to 18 Mbit/s, while Extreme speeds of up to 24 Mbit/s would be increased to 28 Mbit/s. Also, Ultimate speeds of up to 50 Mbit/s would now be up to 75 Mbit/s. On March 8, data allowances for each plan would be increased by 10 GB and 20 GB, respectively. In August 2012, Rogers doubled speeds on its Lite plan from 3 Mbit/s to 6 Mbit/s. It also increased its usage caps from 15 GB to 20 GB. On August 1, 2012, Rogers started the availability of an unadvertised Ultimate tier which offers 150 Mbit/s of download speed and 10 Mbit/s of upload speed. Currently being implemented within the GTA area, the company plans to extend this service's availability to the rest of Ontario by the end of 2012. Customers with the older Ultimate tier will be informed when the new tier is available. Rogers introduced
fibre Fiber or fibre (from la, fibra, links=no) is a natural or artificial substance that is significantly longer than it is wide. Fibers are often used in the manufacture of other materials. The strongest engineering materials often incorporate ...
to the home (FTTH) residential internet service in 2012. It is only available is select areas of Toronto, ON and Moncton, NB. In March 2015, Rogers introduced a streamlined package structure, known as Rogers Ignite. The Ignite packages are aimed primarily towards
streaming media Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...
, with the majority of the packages offering no usage caps. In October 2015, Rogers launched Ignite Gigabit Internet, which supports
4K resolution 4K resolution refers to a horizontal display resolution of approximately 4,000 pixels. Digital television and digital cinematography commonly use several different 4K resolutions. In television and consumer media, 38402160 (4K Ultra-high-definitio ...
streaming to
Rogers Cable Rogers Cable Inc. is Canada's largest cable television service provider with about 2.25 million television customers, and over 930,000 Internet subscribers, primarily in Southern & Eastern Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador. Ro ...
NextBox 4K receivers. In November 2015, Rogers launched a Fido-branded home internet service in its Ontario markets, offering a 30 Mbit/s package with a 300 GB bandwidth cap, and discounts for Fido mobile customers.


Services

Rogers offers cable Internet using the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (
DOCSIS Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) is an international telecommunications standard that permits the addition of high-bandwidth data transfer to an existing cable television (CATV) system. It is used by many cable televisio ...
) standard. They also offer value-added services such as
Internet security Internet security is a branch of computer security. It encompasses the Internet, browser security, web site security, and network security as it applies to other applications or operating systems as a whole. Its objective is to establish rules a ...
computer software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
.


Cable Internet

Cable Internet from Rogers is branded as "Hybrid Fibre", to indicate that on the
coaxial cable Coaxial cable, or coax (pronounced ) is a type of electrical cable consisting of an inner conductor surrounded by a concentric conducting shield, with the two separated by a dielectric ( insulating material); many coaxial cables also have a p ...
in customers' homes, the frequencies used for Internet service are separate from those used for Rogers'
cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...
service. Available at a variety of speeds, from Lite (10 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up) to Ultimate (250 Mbit/s down, 20 Mbit/s up) tiers. Rogers Hi-Speed Internet Ultimate Fibre's speeds are 350 Mbit/s down and 350 Mbit/s up. Rogers Hi-Speed Ultimate and Ultimate Fibre's usage caps had been increased dramatically to 1 TB/month and 2 TB/month respectively. Those who do not subscribe to television services from Rogers cannot access most analog cable channels. Channels 2 to 6, however, can be legally watched without a subscription. These channels are also available over the air, with the exception of the TV guide on channel 4. Rogers Hi-Speed Internet users may be warned, through their browser via Rogers-injected code, that they have reached 75% or 100% of their monthly limit. This message explains that there will be charges for additional usage after the 100% warning for exceeding their limit. The overcharge fees are charged on a per-gigabyte basis, rounded down to the nearest gigabyte. Overage costs as low as $0.50 for the high-end Ultimate plan, but costs as much as $4.00 for the low-end Lite plan. All plans except for Lite are
DOCSIS Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) is an international telecommunications standard that permits the addition of high-bandwidth data transfer to an existing cable television (CATV) system. It is used by many cable televisio ...
3.0 compatible.


Fibre Internet (FTTH)

Rogers confirmed that it is using fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) to power a new broadband service tier that provides upload and download speeds of up to 350Mbit/s (symmetric). The tier, called Rogers Ultimate Fibre Internet, is currently available only in parts of Toronto and the MSO's Atlantic region, which includes Moncton. According to Rogers, this is not a beta but in fact a first market rollout of fibre to the home service; meaning rogers is likely to expand this to other areas. The service comes with a monthly 2-terabyte usage limit. Pricing is listed at $225.99 CAD per month as of October 30, 2013. This new service is based on
GPON G.984, commonly known as GPON (gigabit-capable passive optical network), is a standard for passive optical networks (PON) published by the ITU-T. It is commonly used to implement the outermost link to the customer (last kilometre or last mile) o ...
.


Security

While previously offering
Norton Internet Security Norton Internet Security, developed by Symantec Corporation, is a discontinued computer program that provides malware protection and removal during a subscription period. It uses signatures and heuristics to identify viruses. Other features inc ...
, Rogers switched to offering Rogers Online Protection. It contains anti-virus/spyware, parent/privacy control and firewall features. A cutoff time of June 30, 2009 was set for people to switch from their previous protections to this new one. The security suite is distributed for free with basic services, such as antivirus, antispyware, firewall, and parental controls, while premium services, at an additional cost, include PC optimizing tools, identity theft protection, wireless security services, and backup services. The security suite only supports
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
operating systems.


Legacy services

Rogers previously offered a Portable Internet service in select rural regions, similarly to its competitor
Bell Internet Bell Internet, originally and frequently still called Sympatico, is the residential Internet service provider (ISP) division of BCE Inc. As of May 3, 2012, Bell Internet had over 3 million subscribers in Ontario and Quebec, making it the large ...
. These services used the
Inukshuk Wireless Inukshuk Wireless Inc. is a joint venture of BCE Inc. and Rogers Communications, created in 2005 to establish a Canada-wide network for wireless Internet connectivity in 45 major cities and over 120 rural communities, throughout the ten Industry ...
network. The company is no longer accepting subscriptions to this service, as they plan to discontinue the service on March 1, 2012. Customers are encouraged to use
Rogers Wireless Rogers Wireless Inc. is a Canadian mobile network operator, wireless telephone company headquartered in Toronto, providing service nationally throughout Canada. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Rogers Communications. The company had revenues of ...
Internet services instead, which generally offer a much lower bandwidth cap.


Criticism

Rogers has been criticised for traffic redirection and inspection. They use
deep packet inspection Deep packet inspection (DPI) is a type of data processing that inspects in detail the data being sent over a computer network, and may take actions such as alerting, blocking, re-routing, or logging it accordingly. Deep packet inspection is oft ...
to identify and throttle BitTorrent traffic. and use website address errors (failed DNS lookups) to redirect traffic to their search portal. They have also made a controversial move to display advertisements in webmail despite users having to pay for the service (usually in paid web-apps, there is no advertising).


Throttling

BitTorrent traffic was restricted through
bandwidth throttling Bandwidth throttling consists in the intentional limitation of the communication speed (bytes or kilobytes per second) of the ingoing (received) data and/or in the limitation of the speed of outgoing (sent) data in a network node or in a network ...
using the SCE-2020, and in later years, the SCE-8000 from
Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...
Inc, which had caused complaints as users felt Rogers was overstepping their bounds as a service provider and despite Rogers advertising their service "for sharing large files and much more". Rogers had previously denied such allegations, despite widespread reports of the issue. Further controversy arose when in May 2007, Rogers began throttling all encrypted file transfers allegedly to combat BitTorrent traffic, but affecting all encrypted transfers regardless if they are BitTorrent traffic or not. In January 2011, the CRTC issued a letter to Rogers stating it was breaking CRTC policy by not "indicat ngthat there are circumstances whereby the Rogers ITMP will also affect download speeds available to subscribers." Despite the letter from the CRTC, Rogers still had not updated their policy pages as of February 4, 2011, and continued throttling all non-
whitelist A whitelist, allowlist, or passlist is a mechanism which explicitly allows some identified entities to access a particular privilege, service, mobility, or recognition i.e. it is a list of things allowed when everything is denied by default. It is ...
ed internet traffic (no longer just P2P) for up to 15 minutes after P2P had been disabled. Several games had been caught up in this more restrictive throttling as Rogers was incorrectly detecting them as P2P, and had also been slow to fix it despite offers of assistance from customers, and game manufacturers. On May 31, 2011, Rogers filed that they had resolved the
World of Warcraft ''World of Warcraft'' (''WoW'') is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. Set in the ''Warcraft'' fantasy universe, ''World of Warcraft'' takes place within the world of Azeroth ...
throttling, however they had only resolved it on their testing equipment, as users were still experiencing throttling. This resulted in the CRTC ordering testing done by Rogers, and the CRTC providing the complainant (Teresa Murphy) a redacted copy of the Rogers testing. On September 22, 2011, the CRTC release
Telecom Information Bulletin CRTC 2011-609
which set out new steps for complaints, and allowed for the
World of Warcraft ''World of Warcraft'' (''WoW'') is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. Set in the ''Warcraft'' fantasy universe, ''World of Warcraft'' takes place within the world of Azeroth ...
complaint to be sent to the CRTC Enforcements division. While the World of Warcraft complaint was then closed as it was resolved, the creators of the WoW complaint created a new one, which was then sent to Enforcements division, who then began looking into Rogers' throttling practices, and found additional non-compliance. After Bell announced they were ending throttling in December 2011, and the CRTC Enforcement division finding another violation of CRTC throttling policy in January 2012, Rogers announced on Feb 6, 2012 that they were ending throttling on their network by the end of 2012.


Injection of content

Since early December, 2007, Rogers has been injecting their own content into other companies' websites without permission. Rogers users who are close to their maximum
Data cap A data cap, often erroneously referred to as a bandwidth cap, is an artificial restriction imposed on the transfer of data over a network. In particular, it refers to policies imposed by an internet service provider in order to limit customers' u ...
in their internet plan of choice are seeing red text appear above the content of every website they visit. The notice continues to appear on every page until the user either clicks a link acknowledging that they have seen the message or chooses to opt out of the notification.


References


External links


Rogers Hi-Speed Internet
{{Canadian ISP Rogers Communications Yahoo! co-branded ISPs Internet service providers of Canada