ROGERS CABLE

'Rogers Cable Inc.' is 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'.

Contents

History

Management

Canadian cable territories

Competitors

Video stores

Controversy

Project Cleanfeed

Throttling

Lawsuit

References

External links

History

Rogers was one of the first cable-system operators in Canada, having secured licenses 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.

Management

★ Nadir Mohamed, C.A. - President and Chief Operating Officer Communications Group

★ Edward S. Rogers - President Rogers Cable Inc.

★ Michael A. Adams - Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer

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.
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 have been traded to Shaw Communications in exchange for that company's large majority assets in Ontario and New Brunswick, and many of the others were sold to Cogeco.
Due to its size, Rogers has been able to be one of the major innovators 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.

Competitors

Rogers main competitors include satellite companies Bell ExpressVu and Star Choice.

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.

Controversy

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. ^[1]

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. ^[2]
[3]

Lawsuit

Rogers Cable has been sued for censoring the comments of a political candidate who mentioned "A Channel" in a speech months before Rogers bought A Channel itself, contrary to CRTC policies and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

References

1. Project Cleanfeed Canada
2. Rogers Bit Torrent Cat & Mouse
3. Rogers Fights BitTorrent by Throttling All Encrypted Transfers

External links

★ Rogers Communications Website

★ Rogers Personal TV

★ Rogers Plus

★ Rogers Television

★ Citizen information website on Rogers