The IT Nerd

Recently, Bell was told by the CRTC that they had to open up their fibre networks to companies like Teksavvy so that in theory it would result in lower telco prices for Canadians. Bell in response acted like a two year old having a hissy fit and stopped rolling out fibre and dropping their 8 Gbps tier from being available for customers to get. Not that anyone needs speeds that fast. As a result, Bell’s decision to throw their toys out of the baby carriage has created is an opportunity for Rogers to step in and fill the void.

No. Seriously. Hear me out on this one.

Frequent readers of this blog will know that I have been extremely critical of Rogers. This organization has some serious issues that keep it from competing with Bell. Especially when it comes to the speed of their Internet offering where Bell has been putting the screws to them for years. But with Bell’s decision to hold Canadians hostage because they don’t like what the CRTC has said, Rogers could do the following to put the screws to Bell:

• Rogers could aggressively roll out fibre to areas where Bell has seemingly abandoned: Rogers could roll into places like Barrie Ontario where Bell stopped their roll out and run fibre. And by fibre I mean fibre from end to end. Is that instant? No. But if they got shovels in the ground and put forward a date that they stuck to, Rogers would look like heroes. And they’d also gain back subscribers the they lost to Bell because cable simply doesn’t measure up to fibre.
• Rogers could aggressively transition cable customers to fibre: If Rogers could start transitioning their cable customers to fibre, that would stop customers from defecting to Bell in areas where both companies operate and fibre on Bell is available. It would also show that Rogers recognizes that their cable offering has reached end of life and they are moving to technology that is better for their customers.
• Rogers could leverage the one good thing about their Internet offering to beat Bell : Now I will admit that Rogers Internet isn’t the most reliable. For example they have problems keeping a DNS server live for any length of time. But Rogers does have one good thing that their Internet offering has. And that is IPv6 which is the future of the Internet and something that Rogers embraced that years ago. Bell on the other hand hasn’t for whatever reason hasn’t rolled out IPv6 on their Internet offering. And at some point very soon, it will come back to bite Bell. Rogers could simply accelerate that by having a fibre offering that leverages IPv6 and market it as “future proofing your Internet unlike the guys in blue”, then they could likely steal back market share. Because people like future proofing.

Now those bullet points are good. But the problem is that Rogers is unlikely to action these. I say that because they have to solve their stability problems. For example, their inability to keep a DNS server working that I mentioned earlier. But the real issue is that Rogers no longer seems to be the type of organization that would be willing to do any or all of this. Right now, Rogers seems willing to tread water and not push the envelope in any way. There seems to be no willingness on their part to innovate or even simply say “we can put Bell into the hurt locker if we do these things”. That seems to be a cultural thing at Rogers. And without a change in the culture at Rogers, mediocrity will rule the day. Thus they won’t leverage this opportunity that’s basically been handed to them on a silver platter.

Now I am free to be proven wrong by Rogers. And I would like to be proven wrong as Rogers doing these things might make Bell rethink their life choices and restart their fibre rollout as they might be afraid of Rogers taking market share from them. And that benefits Canadian consumers at the end of the day. So Rogers, I challenge you to put the screws to Bell. Let’s see what you’ve got.

This entry was posted on March 2, 2024 at 9:01 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Bell, Rogers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.