Wayne D's Blog

When I hear my U.S. friends complain about the 250 GB cap that Comcast is implementing I have to laugh. Rogers is my ISP and they have implemented a 60 GB after which they charge overage fees. I have never used 60GB a month but when my wife was watching the Olympics streaming on the internet in August I was worried. Turns out I had nothing to fear, my usage for August was only 30GB, That's without any downloading anything through bit torrent. Why doesn't Rogers have a clue? When you mention Rogers in a group of people be prepared for the horror stories. They have to realize they should sell connectivity not bandwidth. The internet is the crack cocoaine of the 21st century and if they want to succeed they need to feed the habit. That means providing their customers connectivity anywhere they can for a flat fee.

I was at Ivor Wynne stadium in Hamilton yesterday and Cogeco has free wifi there for their customers. What does Rogers have for their customers at the Rogers Centre in Toronto? Nada. They seem to be truly surprised when there was the hug e backlash when they introduced the iPhone with an insanely low data cap. Even if the majority of customers would never use that amount of data people don't want to have to worry about it. Now that the 6GB special data package for the iPhone is done, I expect to see the number of new iPhone customers drop. If everytime you pull the phone out of your pocket you are worried how much it's going to cost you why would you bother buying one?

If someone came today and offered me connectivity with a guaranteed minimum rate for $100 a month with half decent roaming wifi connectivity I'd drop Rogers internet and cable in a second, ditch the phone and go VOIP. Bell keeps trying to sell me DSL for a lower price with crazy low bandwidth and transfer levels. Forget it guys, you don't have a clue either. If Rogers want to bury Bell then they need to differentiate their offering from Sympatico not match them GB for GB in their transfer cap level. Rogers needs to look back in history to all those dial up ISP who were left on the technological trash heap and learn a lesson before they get whacked.

Innovate or die boys and girls at Rogers otherwise in 10 years you'll be wondering why the world has passed you by. Sell connectivity not transfer volume. Do you want to be the empty downtown small businesses or the Walmart Superstore?

Now I'm off to watch some streaming video on the web and download a movie from iTunes, if I haven't used too much transfer volume this month.