News

Bell Aliant Sues Rogers Over Internet Ads

The Globe reports that Bell Aliant has fired the latest salvo in the fight over Internet speed claims, suing Rogers over its marketing campaign.

11 Comments

  1. Darryl Moore says:

    compare ISPs
    Following is a breakdown of the various ISP offerings. All of it is far less value for your money than what I currently pay for my DSL service through Primus. This means that somehow the technology is getting to be more expensive, when the trend has always been for tech to become less expensive. Go figure.

    Judging from this table, yeah I’d say rogers has the highest download speed, but they both place ridiculously low caps on their services and neither Bell nor Rogers offer as good value for money as Teksavvy. This illustrates to me the need for net neutrality laws and independent ISPs.

    speed cap Cost
    down/up

    Bell DSL
    2M/800K 2G $22
    6M/1M 25G $32

    Bell FIBER
    6M/1M 25G $32
    12M/1M 50G $37
    16M/1M 75G $47
    25M/7M 75G $53

    Rogers CABLE
    500K/256K 2G $26
    2M/256K 25G $36
    10M/512K 60G $47
    10M/1M 95G $60
    25M/1M 125G $70
    50M/2M 175G $100

    Teksavvy DSL
    5M/800K 200 $30
    5M/800K n/a $40

  2. A More Revealing Comparison
    For every Mbps rating, I’ve expanded it up to monthly capacity (GB/month).
    For every GB/mo rating, I’ve reduced it down to Mbps

    Neither Bell nor Rogers actually offers a single service with even a measly megabit per second of ultimate throughput.

    Bell’s miserable offerings:
    Bell Internet Performance
    Download speed – Up to 6 Mbps (1898.4375 GB/month)
    Upload speed – Up to 1 Mbps (316.40625 GB/month)
    Included monthly usage – 25 GB (0.079 Mbps)

    Bell Internet Essential Plus
    Download speed – Up to 2 Mbps (632.8125 GB/month)
    Upload speed – Up to 800 Kbps (247.192 GB/month)
    Included monthly usage – 2 GB (6.473 Kbps or 0.00632 Mbps)

    Bell Internet Max 12
    Download speed – Up to 12 Mbps (3796.875 GB/month or 3.708 TB/month)
    Upload speed – Up to 1 Mbps (316.406 GB/month)
    Included monthly usage – 50 GB (0.158 Mbps)

    Bell Internet Max 16
    Download speed – Up to 16 Mbps (5062.5 GB/month or 4.944 TB/month)
    Upload speed – Up to 1 Mbps (316.406 GB/month)
    Included monthly usage – 75 GB (0.237 Mbps)

    Rogers’ equally miserable offerings:
    Ultra-Lite
    500 Kbps download speed (154.495 GB/month)
    256 Kbps upload speed (79.101 GB/month)
    2 GB Monthly Usage (6.473 Kbps)

    Lite
    3 Mbps download speed (949.218 GB/month)
    256 Kbps upload speed (79.101 GB/month)
    25 GB Monthly Usage (0.079 Mbps)

    Express
    10 Mbps download speed (3164.0625 GB/month or 3.090 TB/month)
    512 Kbps upload speed (158.203 GB/month)
    60 GB Monthly Usage (0.190 Mbps or 194.180 Kbps)

    Extreme
    10 Mbps download speed (3164.0625 GB/month or 3.090 TB/month)
    1 Mbps upload speed (316.406 GB/month)
    95 GB Monthly Usage (0.30024 Mbps)

    Extreme Plus
    25Mbps download speed (7910.156 GB/month or 7.725 TB/month)
    1 Mbps upload speed (316.406 GB/month)
    125 GB Monthly Usage (0.395 Mbps)

    Ultimate
    50 Mbps download speed (15820.3125 GB/month or 15.450 TB/month)
    2 Mbps upload speed (632.8125 GB/month)
    175 GB Monthly Usage (0.553 Mbps)
    —-

    And the Industry Minister thinks we’ve got a thriving, competitive marketplace for internet services. BAH!

    Strip Bell of the last mile already!!! Put the last mile in the control of some non-profit, municipal organization whose only concern is maintaining the last mile so that any ISP can hook into it at blazing fast speeds. That’s the only thing that will ever remedy this miserable state of affairs.

  3. A More Revealing Comparison
    I should just add that those services(up/down speed and monthly caps) were lifted directly from Bell and Rogers’ websites last December.


  4. Hopefully, they keep suing each other, to the point that they both go out of business. That’s probably not going to happen of course, but we can always dream.

  5. Heres one example of the misleading ads Rogers uses. Notice the words “It’s like your own lane during rush hour” right beneath “upload a torrent” on a bitTorrent (p2p) website. They (Rogers) also openly admit to throttling P2P 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

    http://bit.ly/dcH6Sj or http://imgur.com/Zkbjw.png

  6. Re: Darryl Moore
    You have also fallen victim to Bell’s misleading advertising. Perhaps Rogers should sue them in Ontario for misleading advertising too.

    Bell Aliant offers fiber to the home services (I cannot find a bandwidth cap listed so hopefully it really is unlimited).
    FiberOP Internet 1: 20 Mbps/5
    FiberOP Internet 2: 35 Mbps/10
    FiberOP Internet 3: 60 Mbps/15

    BCE (those west of the east coast) does not yet offer fiber internet but a product called “FIBE” which is just VSDL2 technology (yes using those same copper wires coming into your house) and is certainly designed to confuse you into thinking it is fiber internet.

  7. Don’t forget about Novus 🙂
    All plans have an additional discount of $5(or $10 for the 100 mbps+ plans) for bundling and are not filtered or bandwidth limited. They do have a monthly cap but is more reasonable than bells listed above.

    20/10 $37.50 cap:110/110 GB
    40/10 $89.95 cap:200/200
    100/10 $179.95 cap:500/500
    200/10 $279.95 cap:750/750

    They also have soho packages with synchronous download/upload up to 200/200 mbps. I’m so glad my condo complex is supported by Novus.

  8. @Daryl & Shawn
    Be careful comparing Bell Canada and Bell Aliant. They are affiliated, but not the same company (both are owned by BCE). Unfortunately this is a fairly common mistake. Bell Aliant operates primarily in the Maritimes (with a small presence in Ontario and Quebec), while Bell Canada is the primary provider in Ontario and Quebec.

  9. Dana Connelly says:

    Bell Aliants Fiberop is actual fiber right into the house bot copper…
    Darryle Moore:

    Bell Aliant offers fiber to the home services (I cannot find a bandwidth cap listed so hopefully it really is unlimited).
    FiberOP Internet 1: 20 Mbps/5
    FiberOP Internet 2: 35 Mbps/10
    FiberOP Internet 3: 60 Mbps/15

    Aliant’s packages said above is actual fiber optic straight into home, They are sending techs out to completely add all new boxes running actual fiber into your house and new fiber modems. ATM one install on a house takes a Tech 6 hours to do, This will probably go down a whole lot once they get use to doing it over and over but it is fiber to home, Fiber runs straight from the pole node into your house to the modem and or TV boxes…

    Just so you know.

    I would just like to know if there is gonna be a bandwidth cap, atm none of our High speed plans up to the 13mbps plans have bandwidth caps so hope fiber will not but I can not see it that fast speeds will for sure get capped. Plus This capped shit is stupid we should get capped only what we upload not upload and download both its like double tagging us. If someone calls you long distance on your phone you both do not get dinged for long distance just the person calling, so should be same way for the way bandwidth is actual metered…

  10. i dont know about out west????
    but here in the maritimes(Bathurst) we are served by bellaliant with there new service called “bell fiberop” they run a fiber directly inside your house and right in your (Alcatel Lucent)modem you can physicaly touch the fiber .although they have such a big job for each house oufff..did you know that when your address becomes available for the fibreop service after you placed your order when the technies arrive at your house the actual fiber optic cable that runs from the node ,trunk ,tap,ect,,, to your modem is already measured that is Ssooo COOL,well i think so… (your house)The fiberop cable that runs from node to modem is already pre measured they already know the distance between node in pole to modem in house so by the time they get to your house the actual fiberop cable is ready to install just screw it in both ends becaus you cannot splice our cut or even bent a fiberop cable ..its almost impossible the have thec at your house with the tools to weld glas comntain in fibreops anyways just so cool also i get telephone with all services and 15g down and up with no caps and i get a bellaliant hdpvr(set top box)
    free and almost all channels in hd…enought for now