Starting in March Rogers says it will stop throttling its customers.
About friggin time is all I can say. While I'm not a Rogers customers, I run off their network via Teksavvy and it's annoying as hell how they throttle connection speed between 6 pm and midnight.
The decision was not made because Rogers cares about it's customers though. Rather, it appears it was the result of the CRTC working with Cisco in response to complaints by the Canadian Gamers Organization.
About friggin time is all I can say. While I'm not a Rogers customers, I run off their network via Teksavvy and it's annoying as hell how they throttle connection speed between 6 pm and midnight.
The decision was not made because Rogers cares about it's customers though. Rather, it appears it was the result of the CRTC working with Cisco in response to complaints by the Canadian Gamers Organization.
Last month, the CRTC notified Rogers it was violating federal net neutrality rules by deliberately slowing or throttling time-sensitive internet traffic, specifically online games.
The CRTC based its findings on the results of an investigation in collaboration with Cisco Systems, the hardware and software vendor that Rogers uses.
The probe was launched last year after a complaint by the Canadian Gamers Organization that accused Rogers of hindering online games, such as World of Warcraft and Call of Duty: Black Ops, in violation of the federal regulator’s guidelines.
I was really surprised to see Cisco rat out Rogers (if that's what happened - and it appears that it was Cisco that provided the CRTC with evidence / analysis that confirmed Rogers throttles), given Rogers is a Cisco customer. But then again, the Canadian government is a Cisco client also.
Either way, I'm glad to see that the CRTC has learned a lesson from the usage-based billing fiasco last summer. The CRTC could have buried the findings or simply allowed Rogers to come up with a dozen reasons why the findings are misleading and require further investigation, but they seem to have pressed hard and said enough is enough with the throttling.
From a PR perspective this was a wise move. After last years UBB fiasco my view of the CRTC was that they are nothing but a corrupt puppet organization in the government selling out Canadians to corporate interests.
However, if they are able to end Roger's throttling activities (which Rogers had denied they do for years, yet which everyone knows they do) then perhaps there is hope that they weren't corrupt but rather simply incompetent at the time of the UBB fiasco.
However, if they are able to end Roger's throttling activities (which Rogers had denied they do for years, yet which everyone knows they do) then perhaps there is hope that they weren't corrupt but rather simply incompetent at the time of the UBB fiasco.
Either way, from a PR perspective good on you CRTC - this is after all what government is suppose to do, represent the interests of the Canadian people and not the selective interests of a couple big companies.
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