Rogers Ordered to Stop Throttling Games

[XT inc]

For the record, however, I love the LCBO.

How can you utter those words Andy? Aside from maybe being cleaner than a gas station's fridge, and a free copy of Food and Drink magazine,When they have it in stock(Which is never).

They have a very rigid selection of brands, are only open government hours, are a fair distance away depending on where you live, and let us not forget...

Charge you insane mark up on all alcholic beverages sold because once again a monopoly has been issued over the sale of liquor in this province. Nanny state and tax arguements etc.

I lived in the U.S all of last summer, you could pick up a 24 of what would equate to Laker Lager here for 9.99 at Walmart open 24/7. Buying what would be a $70 top shelf bottle of Vodka for $15.(Taxes aside) What do we get for paying many times more than the drink costs nothing but inconvenience.

 

[samsonguy920]

This really makes me wonder how much authority the CRTC has when Rogers can skirt the issue and basically thumb its nose at them. As screwed up as things are in the US, if Rogers tried this crap with the FCC, they would already have gotten fined and would be facing getting shut down.

Canada isn't sounding so great to be in for internet users.

 

[SinisterGehe]

I am happy to live in Finland, a country in which we pay for the connection speed instead of the usage, all companies compete who got the fastest and the cheapest Internet coverage. Even on mobile networks.

But yeah... Bad system, glad I don't live there.

 

[vivster]

well it's common practice for ISPs to throttle traffic heavy applications
the telekom germany did(and still does) this with youtube
but they finally have been called to order

i think it's a shame that flat rates(i.e. unlimited traffic) is still not what it should be

 

[imnot]

When TF2 went free to play, my brother got it and so did I.

The game is 8GB. We have a 60GB limit.

I don't think I need to say what happened, but it was anything but free.

EDIT: and yes, I hate Rogers with a passion. This is a case when a monopoly is NOT a good thing.

Well I got tf2 when it cost money, and I have a 20gb cap.
I also got Garrys mod that day.
That was one FUN internet bill!

 

[dfphetteplace]

It kicks in when exceeding 80 KBPS? Good Lord. What do they think this is, the 90s? Hell, you could probably run into that streaming one HD video on YouTube. How are things like Netflix and cloud/online gaming supposed to flourish when the ISPs are doing bullshit like this?

Exactly. Companies are now imposing 250gb limits per month, and now everything is moving to the cloud. While currently these limits only effect 2% on customers, in a year or two, it will be everyone.

 

[toomuchnothing]

I pity my fellow Canadians that have to deal with Rogers for such poor service. Gotta say after seeing what their customers deal with I'm rather more appreciative of my service from Cogeco where I'm peaking at 3 mbps when downloading from Steam and other online services with no throttling(only 125 gig monthly cap though but more than ample for my uses).

 

[elementsoul]

I used to use Rogers and it was hell. They would crash Skype as soon as I tried to host a call. And yes when I say crashed the programmed stopped functioning likely de to them instantly throttling the connection.

I'm currently using execulink which is worse for download speeds and upload speeds but it has a much large cap on it and they have never throttled anything on me.

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

It should be illegal for ISPs to not provide an unlimited usage option. $2 per gig after a small limit is absolutely fucking outrageous. I pay less than $35 per month for unlimited with Cox Cable.

 

[DoomyMcDoom]

I live on west coast of canada, use shaw, 100gbs/month limit on a lower end service, cheap reliable fast no peer to peer stopping BS. much better.

 

[Tharwen]

Under current policies, Rogers' traffic management system is set to kick in when a user's combined peer-to-peer bandwidth usage exceeds 80 kilobits - yes, kilobits - per second.

Whu-?

My laptop, right now, is idling at around 40KB/s download rate. I'm exceeding that limit by not actively downloading anything...

Isn't it annoying how software developers feel they have a right to randomly download things using my internet whenever they feel like it?

 

[The Great JT]

And to think I whine about Time Warner Cable being slow...

 

[Something Amyss]

STUPID! not all peer to peer connections are doing something illegal.

Be reasonable. You can't expect ISPs to provide service or punish only the guilty.

 

[Mekado]

It should be illegal for ISPs to not provide an unlimited usage option. $2 per gig after a small limit is absolutely fucking outrageous. I pay less than $35 per month for unlimited with Cox Cable.

2$ per gig would be a dream come true, Videotron charges SEVEN dollars per exceeding Gigabyte over the limit.My 55-some$ a month ISP package has a limit of 60G, (up/down combined) it was 40g up/down about a year ago, they recently "upgraded" it.

Now, that's daylight robbery.The speed is somewhat decent at least...

Also, just a comment i work for tech support for the internet in some hotels and more and more hotels (mainly in the USA) actually BLOCKS P2P altogether now.Their philosophy is "since easily 75% of torrents and p2p is piracy, it's easier to just block it than deal with it"

To be fair though, these hotels are ultimately responsible for what mr.customer does with their line, they don't appreciate being fined or dropped as customers for something they have no control over.

 

[Formica Archonis]

It kicks in when exceeding 80 KBPS? Good Lord. What do they think this is, the 90s?

That's the last time they did any major changes to the infrastructure, yes.

Hell, you could probably run into that streaming one HD video on YouTube. How are things like Netflix and cloud/online gaming supposed to flourish when the ISPs are doing bullshit like this?

Simple: They're not. The ISPs don't give a damn about Canadian business as long as they can soak their customers for yesteryear's service. Except the ones the ISPs make up for their propaganda, Canada is on a steady slide downhill in every metric relating to the Internet and general quality of IT. In fact, this was just posted on http://www.michaelgeist.ca/ :

The International Telecommunications Union yesterday released its Measuring the Information Society 2011 report [http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/publications/idi/2011/Material/MIS_2011_without_annex_5.pdf], which benchmarks information society developments worldwide. The centrepiece of the report is the ICT Development Index, which tracks 11 different indicators focused on access, use, and skills (the eleven indicators are: fixed telephone line subscriptions, mobile subscriptions, international Internet bandwidth, households with a computer, households with Internet access, percentage of individuals using the Internet, broadband subscriptions, mobile broadband subscriptions, adult literacy, secondary and tertiary enrolment). Among the indicators, skills are worth 20 percent, while access and use count for 40 percent each. The news for Canada was not good as we fell from 20th in 2008 (the last time the ITU issued its report) to 26th worldwide today. Topping the list was South Korea, but Canada finds itself behind much of Europe, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and several other Asian countries.

While the National Post's Terence Corcoran tries to cherry pick [http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/09/15/terence-corcoran-canada-at-top-of-internet-usage-index/] one indicator - Internet use - to argue that the report shows Canada as a leader, he actually gets it wrong as the report shows Canada in 13th spot, not 2nd as he suggests (pages 154-55 of the report provides the full breakdown showing Canada behind South Korea, the UK, New Zealand, the Netherlands among others).

 

[Kaymish]

so what? my internet is measured in kilobits persecond much of the time it is less than 60 for p2p connections im not sure what it is for normal internet and online games but it cant be that much and i dont lag out

 

[redisforever]

Excellent. I only use Rogers at one house, and some other, smaller, unlimited one at the other.

 

[Robomega]

In BC we have Shaw as a third option, which I use. Never had any problems with them. I've used both Rogers and Telus in the past and had major issues with both of them, including frequent outages and terrible customer support.