kgrosvold wrote:I phoned into Rogers Customer Care and my fears are confirmed.
First, I do feel sorry for the CCRs as Rogers pushes these new packages through and these individuals do not receive the proper training (or so it appears).
The CCR said that this package is not showing as being available in my area right now, check back later.
I asked how that is possible as I am already obtaining a 150 Mbps download speed and I also asked for an explanation of hybrid fibre. The person could not help me.
To me, this is unacceptable. I'm expected to continue paying a higher price for the same quality of service/speed (minus of course 5 Mbps upload speed) until I magically appear in their system as being able to change to the "hybrid" technology.
I could live with what I have now (150/10) no problem, but don't shove more desirable packages in my face that are CHEAPER, tell me that I can't get these packages, and have the "too bad, so sad" attitude about it.
The right thing to do would be to find some "common ground" and attempt to bring my current pricing in line with the new.
It won't make you feel any better but the reason why you can get 150/10 and not 150/15 is because of the /15 part. Rogers won't offer upload speeds more than 10Mbps in areas they haven't upgraded yet. So your best bet is to stay with your (comically overpriced) 150/10/250GB plan for now.
As to why it's called "Hybrid Fibre"...
A modern cable modem system is actually a "hybrid fibre-coaxiel" system. This means that your cable signals are only carried over the coaxiel cabling you're familar with inside your immediate neighbourhood. The bulk of Rogers signals are transported over fibre optic cabling. Basically the primary part of the Rogers service is all fibre optic and they use traditional coaxiel at the very edges of the network to travel the "last mile" into customers homes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_fibre-coaxial
So that's what "Hybrid Fibre" refers to.
Why is Rogers calling their services "Hybrid Fibre" now?
Because Bell Canada, that's why. :)
Rogers' services have been hybrid fibre-coaxiel for some time now, but they're actively using the term in marketing/product names in order to get the word "fibre" into the name. Bell has been rather disengenously calling their VDSL2 services "Fibe" for a couple years now. This of course includes their TV service, "Fibe TV". The vast vast majority of the time these services are delivered over traditional telephone copper pairs using VDSL2 or ADSL2+, served out of a remote at the end of your street which is in turn connected to the backbone via fibre optics.
Effectively the shiny new "Fibe" network Bell is selling is just catching up to the "Hybrid Fibre" network Rogers has been operating for a while now. Bell just had the stroke of "genious" to build it into their product names to try to make people think it's more "modern". People think fibre optics = better (with good reason) so Bell is playing to that.
As a total digression, Bell CSR's don't help the problem at all. I've personally been "exaggerated" at at least a half dozen times by Bell employees who were making the claim that their TV and Internet service is inherently superior to Rogers offerings becaues Bell has "fibre" and Rogers doesn't. Utter nonsense, but again, more than enough to make a neophyte think there is a competitive advantage in Bell's favour.
Hope that helps.