Beyond RGB Classic Games

If you’ve been watching the Olympics in Canada, you’ve probably noticed that Bell has changed the name of most of their internet services to Fibe. That’s Fibe as in fiber optic.

If you don’t know too much about broadband delivery, this probably sounds exciting. Alas, this is nothing special. Most of the telecommunications infrastructure in this country was already fiber optic, so don’t get excited. The reason why we haven’t all be using gigabit internet at home all this time is that a network connection is only as fast as its slowest point. The connection to your home, and within your home, is where things get slow. Cable companies have aggressively developed and adopted the DOCSIS standard to allow cable connections to support high speed internet, while telephone companies have used a standard called ADSL, or some variation on DSL.

Anyway, I won’t bore you with the acronyms and minutiae. The news is that Bell has renamed Performance to Fibe 6, Max 12 becomes Fibe 12, Max 16 becomes Fibe 16, and there’s a new speed called Fibe 25. I don’t know how much I like the name Fibe, but I really like the fact that the speed is in the name. That’s a little thing I like to call honesty, as opposed to the meaningless marketing names Bell and its competitors have used until recently.

So, here’s my revised Tier comparison. There’s a Tier VII now because I’ve decided that 16 Mbps doesn’t compete with 25. That means that Bell has a Tier V product and Rogers doesn’t.

Bell in Blue, Rogers in Red

Oh, did I say that Fibe 6 replaces Performance? Bell is still keeping a product called Performance, even though it’s identical to Fibe 6. I don’t know why.

Anyway, did you notice anything else about the change? All prices went up $2! But they only just raised their prices a few months ago! Also notice that the modem rental on Fibe 25 is a whopping $6.95 per month, like the DOCSIS 3.0 modem/router from Rogers. Bell’s prices are still better than Rogers, but the price gap is closing. It’s strange that it’s Bell that’s closing it rather than Rogers.

Despite the price increases, Bell still beats Rogers on speed and price in every tier. The only place Rogers is still winning is their bandwidth cap.

Bell doesn’t have anything that competes with Rogers Ultimate service at 50 Mbps, but how large can the market for $100 per month internet be anyway? But where Rogers only recently became the first major ISP in Canada to offer a 2 Mbps upload service — which is only available on their absurdly expensive 50 Mbps download service — Bell has just blown them out of the water by offering a 7 Mbps upload speed on their 25 Mbps download service! This might not mean much if it was another $100/month service that no one is ever going to buy, but Fibe 25 is only $6 more per month than Fibe 16. If you’re a webmaster and do as much uploading as I do, there’s no reason not to buy Fibe 25 if you were considering Fibe 16. The only problem is that scary 75 GB bandwidth cap. Rogers 25/1 service has an extra 50 GB per month.

In conclusion, I’m super excited about Canada’s first 7 Mbps upload service. As I concluded before, there’s absolutely no reason to buy internet access from Rogers any more, now that Bell is faster and cheaper in every tier. As a Rogers shareholder, I’m getting a bit fed up that Rogers is making no effort to be competitive. In fact, I’m pretty sure that they’re legally obliged to be competitive to protect their shareholders’ interests. What are they thinking?

I don’t know what to say, folks. I’ve held out all this time, but it’s never been more tempting to switch to Bell. Switching from Express to Fibe 25 would cost an extra $24.91 per month, but my download speed would increase 2.5x, and my upload speed would increase 14x! With the discount for the first 12 months and the bundle discount, this might just be the product that will convince consumers that $75 per month for internet access is reasonable.

Rogers has reduced the price on its absurdly expensive 25 and 50 Mbps internet services to more reasonable levels, which is nice. Extreme Plus (25 down/1 up) dropped $26 to $69.99, and Ultimate (50 down/2 up) dropped a whopping $50 per month to $99.99 per month.

I’m not sure how new this is, but Rogers apparently charges a one-time fee of $14.95 when you initially get their internet service, which is a surprising disincentive to switch. A fee to deter new subscribers? What were they thinking?

It turns out that you don’t actually have to purchase the DOCSIS 3.0 modem-router to get Extreme Plus and Ultimate, though the rental is a surprising $7 per month, versus $3 per month for the DOCSIS 2.0 modem used in the lower tiers. The purchase price of the 3.0 modem-router is $199.95, versus $99.95 for the DOCSIS 2.0 modem.

Anyway, here is the updated pricing for Rogers vs. Bell. Remember that the modem rental can be eliminated from Rogers pricing by purchasing the modem, where as a “rental fee” always applies to Bell because their modems cannot be purchased.

Bell in Blue, Rogers in Red

In this version, Bell is faster than Rogers in every tier in which they compete, sometimes by as much as four times! I see now that there’s no point in basing tiers on price, because there’s no point in comparing these ridiculously mismatched speeds; Rogers simply doesn’t compete with Bell on price any more. Now I see that it should really be based on speed.

Bell in Blue, Rogers in Red

This model just makes more sense. It’s debatable whether Bell’s 16 Mbps service is close enough in speed to compete with Rogers’ 25 Mbps service, but there is no question that Hi-Speed Lite is not in the same tier as Bell’s Performance. It’s a 100% difference in speed! Performance is twice as fast for $4 less. You can’t compare Rogers 3 Mbps service to Bell’s 6 Mbps service. Lite competes with Bell’s 2 Mbps service. I can’t make it any clearer than this: Rogers does not have a Tier III internet service.

Likewise, Ultra Lite is not in the same tier as Essential Plus. Essential Plus may be $4 more, but it’s also four times faster! Rogers is now the only provider that still has a Tier I product. There’s really no reason for any “high speed” internet service to be measured in kilobits per second any more. I was going to rename it Tier 0, but it’s still ten times faster than dial-up, which is reason enough for it to exist. Still, Essential Plus has got to look pretty tempting when it’s four times faster at downloading, three times faster at uploading, and only an extra $4 per month.

As for me, I’m still in Tier IV with Express. Bell wins this tier, too. Rogers, for some reason, has two Tier IV services, and the only difference is that they’ll double your upload speed for an extra $13 per month. There’s no reason to do that, of course, because Max 12 has the same upload speed, and is also faster and cheaper than Extreme. I don’t know why any new customer would go with Rogers for a Tier IV internet service, when Bell is faster than Extreme for $10 less, and also 20% faster at downloading and 100% faster at uploading than Express for only $3 more. So why am I still with Rogers? I’m severely tempted to switch. That means a lot coming from a Rogers shareholder and former employee. Rogers simply isn’t competing with Bell any more. But why not, I wonder?

So, let’s say that I’m switching. Am I going to Max 12 for only $3 more? Actually, as I’ve said in the past, I was happy with my download speed when it was only 7 Mbps. As a webmaster, I spend a lot of time uploading content, so what I really care about is getting a 1 Mbps upload speed. I could get that with Performance for less than I’m paying now. 6/1 is plenty fast, and it would be a no-brainer except that I’m a bit wary of that 25 GB cap. I rarely download more than 20 GB in a month, but I had 59 GB one time, so I might break my cap once or twice a year. Bandwidth cap is the only area where Rogers still beats Bell. But is that enough?

Wake up, Rogers!