Rogers Cable
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Rogers Cable Inc. | |
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| Type | Subsidiary of Rogers Communications |
| Founded | Toronto, Ontario (1967) |
| Headquarters | Toronto, Ontario |
| Key people | Edward Rogers III - President Michael A. Adams - COO |
| Industry | Cable Services |
| Products | Cable TV, Movie Rentals, broadband Internet access |
| Revenue |  $1.95 billion CAD |
| Operating income | $708 million CAD |
| Owner | Rogers Communications |
| Employees | 5,922 (2004) |
| Website | www.rogers.com |
Rogers Cable Inc., a subsidiary of Rogers Communications Inc., is Canada's largest cable television service provider with about 2.25 million television customers, and over 930,000 Internet subscribers, in Southern Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador.
The company's digital cable service is branded as Rogers Personal TV.
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[edit] History
Rogers was one of the first cable-system operators in Canada, having secured licences covering much of the city of Toronto in the mid-1960s. One of the first important acquisitions was in 1979, when Ted Rogers purchased a controlling interest in Canadian Cablesystems and joined it with his broadcast interests. In 1980, Rogers purchased Premier Cable, which controlled the system in Vancouver. Rogers continued to buy other operators, the largest such acquisition came with Rogers' 1994 acquisition of Maclean-Hunter, at that time also among the largest cable operators. Rogers has also owned cable systems in the United States. In 2008, Rogers announced a takeover offer for Aurora Cable, a cable service provider in York Region, Ontario (pending approval by Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)[1].
[edit] Management
- Nadir Mohamed, C.A. - President and Chief Operating Officer Communications Group
- Edward Rogers III - President Rogers Cable Inc.
- Michael A. Adams - Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
[edit] Canadian cable territories
Rogers Cable's territories now consist of: most larger communities in Newfoundland and Labrador, virtually the whole of New Brunswick, selected areas of eastern Quebec near the New Brunswick border, and, in Ontario: nearly all of the Toronto area as well as the areas of Ottawa, London, Kitchener-Waterloo, and Barrie. With the Rogers takeover of Aurora Cable (pending CRTC approval), Aurora, Ontario along with most areas in York Region will also be added in the Canadian cable territories area.
Over the years, and at various times, Rogers has owned all or part of various cable operators serving areas across Canada, including Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Northern Ontario, and the Hamilton area. All of the systems in western Canada were traded to Shaw Communications in late 2000 in exchange for that company's assets in Ontario and New Brunswick, and many of the others were sold to Cogeco.
Because of its size, Rogers has been able to spur innovation in the cable industry, and in the telecommunications industry in general. Its growing digital cable service provides access to technologies such as high definition television, video on demand, interactive television and enhanced television. Rogers also provides broadband Internet access, co-marketed with Yahoo!. The company employs traffic shaping and has been widely criticized for this.
[edit] Competitors
Rogers main competitors include satellite companies Bell ExpressVu and Star Choice.
[edit] Other investments
[edit] CPAC
Through Rogers Cable Inc., Rogers holds a majority interest (41.4%) in CPAC, a public affairs and politics cable channel that consists of both an English and French language feeds.
[edit] Video stores
Rogers Video, Canada's largest domestically owned chain of video stores, operates as a subsidiary of Rogers Cable. One of its biggest competitors is Blockbuster Video.
[edit] Controversy
[edit] Negative Option Billing
In the beginning of 1995, Rogers along with several other cable companies, took part in what became to be known as negative option billing. By adding specialty channels to all users account and billing accordingly, participating cable companies were hit by both regulatory and public opinion backlash when they forced customers to appear at the offices in person to cancel the premium packages.
[edit] Project Cleanfeed
Internet service providers Bell, Bell Aliant, MTS Allstream, Rogers, Shaw, SaskTel, Telus, and Videotron announced "Project Cleanfeed Canada" in November 2006; this involves the blocking of access to hundreds of child pornography sites. Some users consider this to be tantamount to censorship.[2]
[edit] Throttling
BitTorrent traffic is restricted through bandwidth throttling, which has caused complaints as users feel Rogers is overstepping their bounds as a service provider and despite Rogers advertising their service “for sharing large files and much more”. Rogers has 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.[3] [4]
[edit] Injection of content
Since early December, 2007, Rogers has been injecting their own content into other company's websites without permission.[5] Rogers users who are close to the maximum download limit 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.[6]
[edit] References
- ^ Newswire 13 Feb 2008
- ^ Project Cleanfeed Canada
- ^ Rogers Bit Torrent Cat & Mouse. dslreports.com (2006-02-09). Retrieved on 2007-06-15.
- ^ Rogers Fights BitTorrent by Throttling All Encrypted Transfers. torrentfreak.com (2007-04-11). Retrieved on 2007-06-15.
- ^ Rogers tests new cap warning system, raises neutrality alarms
- ^ Canadian ISP tests injecting content into web pages
[edit] External links
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