Intellectual Property Law

Is Rogers Ready to Roll Out Metered Broadband?

By Cynthia Brumfield

Earlier this week I got the word that two North American cable companies are planning to roll out metered broadband service. Unlike Time Warner, which says it is only testing the concept, these two broadband providers are supposedly gearing up to launch consumption-based broadband services.

One of the companies is Canada's Rogers Cable, a not unsurprising development given that late last year Rogers was testing a bandwidth consumption notification system that controversially inserted usage alerts atop customers' Google search pages.

When asked about what I had heard, Rogers spokesperson Taanta Gupta said that Rogers already offers one tier of broadband service that entails a form of metered usage. Rogers offers a (Can) $99.95/month, 18 Mbps download service called Extreme Plus that offers customers 90 GB of usage per month. Extreme Plus subscribers that exceed the 90 GB pay $1.25 for each additional GB consumed.

But, subscribers to other tiers of service aren't currently billed for consumption overages. Rogers offers four other tiers of Internet service, ranging in price from (Can) $24.95/month to $52.95/month, covering monthly bandwidth usage limits of 60 to 100 GB.

When I asked Gupta if Rogers would be implementing metered broadband for these other tiers of service she said "We will not comment on whether we will roll it out [metered broadband] to other customers" beyond the Extreme Plus customer base until Rogers informs those customers of this fact first. She also pointed out that metered broadband is the norm in Canada and that customers who today exceed the bandwidth caps have their accounts suspended.

In fact, Canada's Cogeco already charges $1.00 for every GB that exceeds the relevant tier's bandwidth caps. (Cogeco also offers this handy guide for reducing bandwidth consumption. Among the tips: shut off file-sharing applications, check for viruses and watch out for streaming media.) Bell Canada likewise charges anywhere from (Can) $1.00 to $7.50 for each GB that exceeds the service's cap.

The other North American operator rumored to be readying the rollout of metered broadband is a small but influential U.S. company that operates in only one market (and it's not Cablevision.) This company hasn't returned my calls yet so I can't confirm it.

Full post as published by IP Democracy on February 21, 2008 (boomark / email).