3 Comments

1. Anon-K says:

   January 13, 2012 at 10:24 am

   Interesting
   While there appears to be a big increase, this represents the number of complaints only. What it doesn’t say is if all of these complaints are from only 2 or 3 people (theoretically in that case multiple complaints filed against the same ISP about the same thing, skewing the stats) or from multiple members of the same group (for instance, more members of the same gamer’s group) or from more un-connected people. If it is this latter case (and my hope is that it is) then this represents either a case of things are getting worse, or the publicity surrounding the original gamers group decision has brought to light that there is a means to redress legitimate grievances and people are making use of it (I suspect the latter is more true than the former).
2. Anon-g says:

   January 13, 2012 at 12:06 pm

   The cynical in me wants to say that perhaps the ISP’s are messing about with the networks to justify price increases to ‘fix’ the networks in response to complaints. Rogers’ recently announced price increases are not visibly supported by anything they are doing to improve service quality or quantity.
3. Jason K says:

   January 13, 2012 at 1:35 pm

   I’m the co-founder of the Canadian Gamers Organization (CGO). Nor myself or the other Co-Founder Teresa Murphy plan any campaign with our members to increase the amount of complaints to the CRTC, in fact quite the opposite. During our involvement we were asking our members to contact either myself or Ms. Murphy so that we could try and determine whether or not ITMP was suspected. Most members we worked with did not want to file individual complaints to the CRTC in fear of retaliation from Rogers. We found in several cases where P2P filesharing was not running and consumers where connections were slow, Rogers did fail to actively follow through proper technical troubleshooting. A simple tracert was also not done by Rogers techs to detect and fix network congestion on several nodes across the province. Consumers have been in contact with Rogers on speed issues, but rather than actively troubleshoot these issues, rather than be up front with consumers on whether or not ITMP is suspected, and rather than put the needed investment on congested nodes, consumers are left with no resolution by Rogers.

   We are aware however of 2 of our members that have put forward ITMP complaints individually outside of our own. The first one was with Rogers in which through technical testing and questioning, both Ms. Murphy and I agreed was an issue with network congestion, not ITMP, but again Rogers failed to properly fix the problem, or work with this consumer to obtain a solution. The second individual complaint is currently with Bell, in which the CGO is currently not engaged in.

   Rogers ITMP is only active when P2P applications are running. Any application running while total network output exceeds 80/KBPS with P2P applications running is affected by Rogers ITMP, by Rogers own admission to the CRTC, and through Rogers ITMP disclosure. Also if you are using applications and games that are not running on common ports with P2P running, these applications and games can be effected above and below the 80/kbps total network output threshold. We found that virtually all games we tested with P2P applications running, Rogers ITMP active and total network output exceeded 80/kbps were effected tremendously, and still are.

   Our statement on Rogers Response in this article is as follows:

   “Rogers has been found by the CRTC to not be in compliance with CRTC policy. The solution presented by Rogers in the World of Warcraft compliant isn’t within the guidelines of CRTC policy either. Due to this fact, the Canadian Gamers Organization is awaiting a communication from the CRTC’s enforcement division on exactly what will be done to bring Rogers back into compliance with CRTC policy. Rogers Internet Traffic Management Program’s (ITMP) inability to meet CRTC guidelines is a matter of fact, not perception.

   I see no indication from Rogers response to even suggest they have started working on the core issues we brought to the CRTC. I agree with Rogers that part of the problem is that it’s taken a long time to get here, but that’s due to the culture of denial that still exists with this company, and there doesn’t seem to be any change in that even when faced with the fact of a CRTC decision against them. If Rogers was willing to work with consumers and gamers on technical issues their networks are having, we would not be before the CRTC.”