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Rogers Admits New Net Throttling, Slow to Disclose to the Public

Rogers has been hit with a complaint about its throttling practices but has been very slow amend its public disclosure documents as required by the CRTC.  Complaints began appearing online earlier this fall, with users noting that Rogers was degrading P2P uploads and downloads.  Torrent Freak details what happened next – a complaint to the CRTC, an attempt to downplay the issue, and finally an acknowledgement that the traffic management requires a change in publicly disclosed policy.

15 Comments

  1. Shock … surprise … bewilderment … not.

  2. Canadian big ISPs screwing Canadians? Who would have guessed? Oh wait, everyone. And of course, the CRTC does…nothing.

    Though it’s not much better south of the border either.

  3. What is the penalty for this? Will customers be reimbursed for their degraded connections?

  4. Laurel L. Russwurm says:

    No different than bell… except they are only throttling their own customers
    The CRTC gave Bell permission to throttle not only their own customers but the customers of the Independent ISPs. Usage Based Billing is another example of traffic management the CRTC believes to be reasonable “traffic management.”

    So long as the CRTC is allowed to sacrifice the good of Canadians and regulate according to the agenda of the large incumbents, it will continue and get worse. http://dissolvethecrtc.ca/

    Misguided government policy and regulation will increasingly sabotage Canada’s digital economy. The only way to stop this is to tell the government “No.” Info on who to write to can be found here:
    http://stopusagebasedbilling.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/write-letters-to-stop-ubb/

  5. Chris Clarke says:

    Rogers Social Media team
    Hi Michael – To be absolutely clear on this topic, Rogers Hi Speed does not manage download traffic.

    As stated in our network policy, we only manage upstream traffic of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing at 80 Kbps. We just commented on the TorrentFreak post and I can assure you as well that we have been listening to customer discussions and we have run extensive tests. This did confirm that, although unintentional, we are now managing upstream traffic for some secure protocols running over non-standard ports while doing P2P.

    We have been in communication with the CRTC and they are aware of the situation. We have been working with them through the standard processes and our published network management policy will be amended to clarify that we sometimes manage upstream traffic for some secure protocols running over non-standard ports while doing P2P.

  6. RE: Chris Clarke
    “Hi Michael – To be absolutely clear on this topic, Rogers Hi Speed does not manage download traffic.”

    Yeah, and Bell said the same thing… guess what was actually the case.

    Ah but you are an oligopoly! You can do whatever the hell you want.

  7. Re: Rogers Social Media team
    Thanks for participating Chris.

    It would be helpful if you disclosed what the technical measures are that you are implementing. I realize that a technical description would only be useful to a small minority of users, but that minority are the ones that can vet your implementation for accuracy and even offer suggestions.

    As a technical person myself, I have often run across implementations that seem to sound ok, but have adverse side effects in areas never conceived of by the implementers. In most cases this is simply because the implementers are too focused on their area and don’t consider possible side effects.


  8. @Chris:

    Guys if you throttle it just a little bit more you’ll be competing with $9.95/month dial-up. And bye bye Rogers home phone too, as they’ll need a Bell landline for it to work.

    T. 🙂

  9. BlueBerry Pick'n says:

    Are they trying to kill Canadian business?
    I try very hard to support domestic business, but it’s like nailing your foot to the floor! I don’t want to get my services from some IT company in Dubai with a huge graphic identity marketing budget

    But Canadian businesses are either contemptuous of Canadian customers (Bell once disconnected my phone in the 80s over my inability to pay less than $10 but I begged them to keep my phone so I could get the job callback. They didn’t & I didn’t have a phone when they called, so I lost the job) or just snotty branch offices of some contemptuous US company that abuses its lpyees & thinks Canadian goverment shouldn’t make them pay for a national Corp infrastructure when they could just treat us like Haiti or Mexico

    If Canadians don’t start standing up for ourselves were going to end up like Saipan or some other banana republic.

    “Our brand Is Crisis” isn’t just a film, it’s how they think we’re dumb cattle.
    We must get involved in our social service, give & oversights or they’ll keep kicking us like homeless dogs
    Peace.

  10. BlueBerry Pick'n says:

    “give” oops
    That “helpful” autotyping script didn’t recognize “gov’t”?

  11. Rogers has been slow admitting it, but even if they DO change their policy, it’s retroactively. Why are they allowed to change their service without telling me, I /just/ switched to Rogers cable (only alternative to dsl) in November, only to find that the “15mbps” I was supposed to be getting is actually 0.1mbps – Thats a significant change of service!

    I’m assuming you’ve been reading the DSLreports forums. A lot of people are saying that when Rogers detects p2p, they block ALL encrypted packets with exception to https. Do you know of any way we could find out for sure?

  12. Cloudy Molly says:


    Cloud computing at 0.1mbps – now that would be a real treat.

  13. RE: Chris Clarke
    If you manage upstream traffic – you manage traffic. If I want to download something from one of the big corporate types like iTunes, I get regular speeds, but if I want to share my daughter’s birthday video with my parents overseas, then all of a sudden I have no voice, and my speed is throttled.

    I can’t wait for my contract with Rogers to be over – I hate being treated like a criminal, just because they think that I *might* be doing something illegal.

    I don’t think that the majority of Rogers users are aware of the throttling practices Rogers engages in. But, with time as people become more well-versed in computers they will realize this and change providers. Rogers may operate in an oligopoly, but if they don’t take a “customer-first” approach, and instead become self-appointed thought police then people will leave them, no matter how sparse the competition is.

  14. Complain to the relevant MPs
    The solution for these shenanigans is to write to your MP, the Minister of Industry, and the opposition ministers of industry, and tell them that the current regulatory regime is failing us. They’re not going to change the status quo unless we all complain.