Rogers reduces bandwidth caps just in time for Netflix streaming

Oh Canada, you have all the luck; not. First you have to wait years and years after Netflix streaming comes to the states and now that you've finally got it coming, your biggest ISP drops its Lite service bandwidth caps from 25GB to 15GB. We doubt this is some big conspiracy, but it is rather unfortunate as a single 2 hour HD movie via Netflix will eat into about a fourth of your monthly allotment. And if you go over your 15GB limit, you'll pay $4 per gigabyte, so if you were planning on using the new service we'd suggest you go ahead and sign up for the Extreme service as its 80GB limit leaves a lot more room before you get hit with overage charges.

[MFfan310 Posted Jul 24th 2010 6:21PM]

Sucks for our neighbors up north of the 49th parallel, that's for sure. But knowing the state of Canadian broadband, I expected Rogers to do exactly this.

Anyone want to bet that Rogers will launch its own streaming service that would be exempt from these caps, much like Bell had until recently? And does anyone want to also bet that the Rogers service would be WMV-DRM based and restricted to PC (and possibly Xbox 360) streaming?

[FabDex Posted Jul 25th 2010 9:21AM]

@MFfan310 Rogers is in a partnership with zip.ca, a mail order DVD rental service. Over a year ago, they had an interesting survey to find out if members would be interested in a "rental by web streaming" service. So there you go.

[MaxH Posted Jul 24th 2010 7:14PM]

My god, I thought Comcast was bad.

[engadgetcomexcludeengadget Posted Jul 24th 2010 7:37PM]

@MaxH How is Comcast's 250gb cap bad? I've never gone over 150gb (usually around 75-100gb), and unless you have a massive online backup account, I see no reason to. $30 a month for 30mbps and a 250gb cap is a great deal, though it's more expensive if you don't have the triple play like I do.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 24th 2010 10:44PM]

they do have an online media streaming service http://www.rogersondemand.com/ i dont know if its exempt. i doubt it tho. and it wasnt just the lite service that was cut, they all were. the extreme used to be 90GB. heres an interesting rant about it http://www.digitalhome.ca/2010/07/rogers-cuts-internet-service-while-keeping-prices-the-same/

[cerf77 Posted Jul 26th 2010 9:28AM]

Canada is such a strange and twisted mix of great and terrible. Most things seem to fall to one side or the other.

[Bearxor Posted Jul 26th 2010 12:35PM]

15gb. Wow. I think I could go through that in a day and I'm sure others could go through it faster.