Rogers has been using an archaic program guide on their cable TV service for years now. They’re probably the only one in North America still using it. Well, they have finally decided to upgrade. The new program guide will be in full HD and the rollout started this week.

Bell Canada will stop throttling internet downloads on March 1st. However, this paves the way for a new model where additional downloads will being to cost customers more – including wholesale companies like Teksavvy.

Rogers has not made any announcements yet.

Rogers now provides you the ability to block text messages. Usually you get unwanted text messages from signing up for a contest (free ipad, anyone?) and continue to receive them and be billed for them. Now you can opt out of them. New rules also cap the fee charged for these messages to $40 a month.

There was a study of ISP’s in multiple countries and they measured how much torrent throttling was happening on each ISP. For Canada they found Rogers to be the worst ISP, slowing down Bittorrents by as much as 78%!! The following are their results:

• Rogers 78% slower
• Bell 16% slower
• Shaw 14% slower
• Videotron 3% slower

I’m quitting Rogers.

Rogers has reversed their contreversial 36-month upgrade policy for smartphones. People will now be eligible for hardware upgrades are 24 months, which it was before the change went into affect.

Source: Boy Genius

A year ago, Rogers Extreme and Rogers Express offered the same speed – 10MBps. Rather than paying the higher rate for no reason, I downgraded to Express. They finally updated their offerings, giving 15MBps for Extreme users but requiring a new DOCSIS 3.0 modem to get those speeds. Here is the results of the upgrade:

What’s a bit odd is how low the upload speed is. At 1MBps it is as promised by Rogers, but it pales in comparision on what I can get wirelessly via 3G on my iPhone:

Rogers has been coasting for a long time with their antiquated PVR’s. They were old when they were introduced and have continued to lag behind in features and functionality in the past years. Finally, they have begun to offer a new PVR with more modern features that have been found in Tivo’s, Sling’s, Apple TV’s and other PVR’s for years. The Cisco 8600 is the new PVR that is available.

Notable features include:

• 1080p resolution
• Use a single PVR for the entire house, watch PVR shows on any TV
• Compatible with DLNA for sharing music/movies on a PC
• Ethernet connection for home networking

Look for Rogers to take advantage of some of the advanced features to offer much more interactivity to your television. Bell already offers controlling your PVR over the Internet.

Rogers customers just got a new service – watching TV shows over the Internet. Called Rogers On Demand, current Rogers subscribers get access to certain channels and content online with limited ads. Unfortunately, anything worth watching is probably not on the site right now, unless there’s lots of people wanting to watch old episodes of the West Wing. It doesn’t make up for the fact that Hulu is blocked from Canadian residents, but it’s a start. As the service gets more popular I hope the content improves.

Yes, the Kindle is now available to Canadians. This e-ink reader is the darling of the US for a while, and is now available here, albeit with a few caveats:

• customers will have to order it from Amazon USA. This is a potential disaster because this adds additional shipping costs ($21) and import fees ($31). I’m a little worried that Amazon has rushed this and not thought about the duty and PST/GST consequences – the government is going to add duty and GST and PST on top of when you import. What’s worse, the courier is probably going to be UPS, so customers will also be billed a brokerage fee on top of this. One might hope the “import fee deposit” of $31 will cover these costs, clearly all these charges are more than $31.
• Only the Kindle is available, the Kindle DX is not. That means you do not get the larger 10″ screen, increased storage and rotating display.
• Browsing is turned off. You will not be able to use the Kindle as a web browser. This makes no sense because it’s obvious they have a roaming agreement with a Canadian wireless carrier since you can purchase books wirelessly using 3G. I assume they did this in order to not incur data fees from the carrier. No doubt because our Canadian carriers are probably charging a lot more for data than the American carriers.
• This is unconfirmed but Canadian authors are not available to be purchased via Amazon for the Kindle. I have to look into this more but the licensing isn’t setup for Canadian publishers.
• If the Kindle is here, BRING THE KINDLE IPHONE APP TO US!! No, it’s still not available through App Store.

Update 11/20: CanoeTech believes that the Kindle is using the Rogers network for it’s 3G data.

If you’ve been lamenting that you can’t get an iPhone because you are with Bell or Telus, next week everything is going to change. On Nov. 4th, Telus starts selling the iPhone, and Bell will follow suit.

Prices are exactly the same as Rogers, and come with a 3 yr contract. There is a non-contract price but I don’t think many people will be willing to go for it.

• 8GB 3G for $100 or $600 without contract
• 16GB 3GS for $200 or $700 without contract
• 32GB 3GS for $300 or $800 without contract