Trouble @Home for Rogers Subscribers

By Paul Nicholls | November 02, 2000
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[Toronto, CANADA] Rogers@Home and Excite@Home may be passing on a legacy of substandard customer service to Shaw@Home, according to a recent article in InternetNews.com's ISP-Planet by Associate editor Patricia Fusco (Uh-Oh! Canada, October 31, 2000).

Last week it appeared that appropriate action was taken to resolve some intermittent e-mail problems and spotty service outages occurring throughout the Rogers@Home service area. Rogers@Home vice president Alek Krstajic released a service update (Rogers@Home Oct. 26th Update: A Message from Alek Krstajic, October 26, 2000).

But Fusco reports that the service disruptions appear to be continuing.

"How could Rogers@Home provide such pitiful service and expect to keep customers from switching to different providers or canceling service altogether?" said Fusco. "The answer is simple -- Rogers never intended to keep British Columbia clients in its fold."

Earlier this week, Shaw Communications received regulatory approval to acquire all of more than one million Rogers Communications cable system clients in British Columbia.

However, that does not explain the disruptions in Ontario, which also seem ongoing according to Chris Weisdorf, Rogers@Home User's Association president. "This hasn't been an issue for several months, but now it's back again. This is what I meant when I described @Home's temporary solutions to everything. No fix is ever permanent with these people."

Weisdorf said that, although Rogers@Home service has improved somewhat in Ontario, things are still not satisfactorily repaired by any stretch of the imagination.

While the fate of Ontario @Home users may be in question, there is light at the end of the tunnel for the British Columbia users with the Shaw takeover. Fusco said that Shaw Communications will spend US $132.5 million to improve its Internet network.

Peter Bissonnette, Shaw Cablesystems president, said the upgrade would expand its cable modem network, as well as deliver improved network performance for Shaw cable Internet access and its new digital cable TV services.

Bissonnette said that Shaw would further upgrade its high-speed service by replacing customers' current hardware within 3-4 months with a cable modem that doesn't govern throughput.

Previous InternetNews.com coverage of the @Home networks can be found at:

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