Rogers Cable

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Rogers Cable Inc.
Type	Subsidiary of Rogers Communications
Founded	Toronto, Ontario (1967)
Headquarters	Toronto, Ontario
Key people	Edward Rogers III - President Michael A. Adams - COO
Industry	Cable Services
Products	Cable TV, Movie Rentals, broadband Internet access
Revenue	$1.95 billion CAD
Operating income	$708 million CAD
Employees	5,922 (2004)
Website	www.rogers.com/personaltv

Rogers Cable Inc., 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 1 History 2 Canadian cable territories 3 Competitors 4 Illegal Activity 5 Video stores 6 Controversy 6.1 Project Cleanfeed 6.2 Throttling 7 External links

[edit] History

Rogers was one of the first cablesystem 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Competitors

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

[edit] Illegal Activity

• Rogers Cable, the parent company of Rogers Television, is being sued for illegally censoring the speeches of political candidates in the 2006 Barrie Municipal Elections. The Plaintiff, Darren Roskam, pursued Rogers without a lawyer, and sued in Small Claims by mistake. He is pursuing an appeal, and the matter is before the courts, and has not been settled. Once time has been offered to a candidate to speak, CRTC regulations require that the coverage "must be fair and just." Rogers has no right to censor one word of any speech by a political candidate once the time has been agreed upon, and if it is the same time offered to his opponents. The only exception provided by The Canadian Charter of RIghts and Freedoms is if the speech is calling for harm to be carried out upon a group or individual, which was not the case here. Rogers Cable censored the speech because it briefly mentioned Rogers' corporate friend, Chum's A Channel.

• Rogers has simultaneously denied and admitted Roskam's claims. Roskam alleged censorship, and Rogers admitted to "omitting" parts of the speech. The case continues, and experts expect it will be precedent-setting.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Controversy

[edit] 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]

[edit] Throttling

Some users have complained that Rogers blocks use of BitTorrent clients through bandwidth throttling, which they view as overstepping its role as an Internet provider. Rogers has denied such allegations.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] External links

• Rogers Communications Website
• Rogers Personal TV
• Rogers Plus
• Rogers Television
• Citizen information website on Rogers