Rogers Cable

History

Rogers was one of the first cable-system operators in Canada, having secured licences covering much of the then 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 (CCL), which operated cable companies across Ontario, including the then City of North York, Oshawa/Whitby, London, Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, Brantford, and Newmarket, and joined the CCL properties with his cable interests. In 1980, Rogers purchased Premier Cable, which controlled the system in Vancouver, parts of Ontario, and had investments in Irish cable companies in Dublin, Galway and Waterford. In 1986 Rogers sold their shares of Irish companies to the Irish state broadcaster (RTÉ) and state telecoms company (Eircom), these cable companies are now part of the UPC Ireland network.

In 1981, Rogers entered the U.S. cable market, obtaining franchises in Orange County, California; Minneapolis; and Portland, Oregon, and purchased the cable system in San Antonio. These assets were acquired by Paragon Cable in 1989 for over US$1 billion; Paragon in turn was acquired by Time Warner Cable several years later.

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. Through its acquisition of Maclean-Hunter, Rogers has also briefly owned cable systems in the United States, which it promptly sold to Comcast in 1994. In 2008, Rogers announced a takeover offer for Aurora Cable, a cable service provider in York Region, Ontario (pending approval by Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)).

In 2010, a corporate reorganization resulted in Rogers Cable being dissolved as a distinct legal entity, and its operations absorbed into Rogers Communications Partnership, a general partnership jointly held by Rogers Communications and its subsidiary Fido Solutions.

In October 2015, Rogers announced that it would begin to offer 4K-compatible set-top boxes, beginning in Toronto and expanding to its other markets in 2016. Telecasts of 4K sporting events from Sportsnet and TSN began to be carried on these set-top boxes in January 2016.

In December 2016, Rogers announced that it had scrapped a planned project to deploy an IPTV-based television platform, and would instead license Comcast's X1 platform Shaw launched its own service based on X1, BlueSky, in January 2017.

Management

Canadian cable territories

Rogers Cable's territories currently consist of: most larger communities in Newfoundland and Labrador, nearly all of New Brunswick, selected areas of eastern Quebec near the New Brunswick border (including Carleton-sur-Mer), and in Ontario: nearly all of the Toronto area as well as the areas of Ottawa, London, Kitchener-Waterloo, Barrie, and parts of Hamilton. With the Rogers takeover of Aurora Cable Internet, Aurora, Ontario, along with most areas in York Region will also be added in the Canadian cable territories area.

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, and Northern Ontario. All of the systems in Western Canada were traded to Shaw Communications in late 2000, in exchange for that company's assets in Ontario and New Brunswick, and many of the others were sold to Cogeco.

Rogers also provides broadband Internet access, co-marketed with Yahoo!. The company employs traffic shaping and has been widely criticized for this.

CPAC

Through Rogers Cable, Rogers is the largest shareholder (41.4%) in CPAC, a national public affairs and politics cable channel based in Ottawa, that consists of both an English and French language feeds. CPAC's main programming consists of live and delayed coverage of the House of Commons, and the Senate.

Retail stores

Rogers Plus, Canada's largest domestically owned chain of video stores, operates as a subsidiary of Rogers Cable. It launched as Rogers Video in 1988, after which it grew by acquiring smaller chains and winning multiple awards. Rogers Video and Rogers Wireless stores were all renamed to Rogers Plus in 2007. There was less emphasis on rentals, although the chain's video stores often featured a developed movie reel artwork with pictures of people and words such as "movies" and "games".

One of its biggest competitors was Blockbuster Video. In a move similar to Rogers, Blockbuster partnered with Wind Mobile to sell mobile telephony and mobile broadband services where available, either in prepaid-only packages sold at the counter or in a full service "store in a store". Blockbuster's Canadian operations went bankrupt and closed its doors by the end of 2011. Wind relocated its stores to be near the old Blockbuster locations.

After 23 years in business, Rogers Plus discontinued movie and game rentals in 2011. Since then, only Rogers' telecom and cable services have been sold at Rogers Plus stores.

Negative option billing

In the beginning of 1995, Rogers along with several other cable companies, added a number of new cable channels under a negative option billing plan. Subscribers opting out of paying for the new channels stood to lose much of their existing specialty channel programming. The participating cable companies were hit by both regulatory and public opinion backlash and ultimately were forced to split the negative-option channels into two separately-purchasable blocks, a move which Rogers had initially opposed as "not technologically feasible".

Dropping of WPBS, WQLN

In July 2009, Rogers Cable announced that on August 18, 2009, they will be replacing PBS members WQLN of Erie, Pennsylvania and WPBS-TV of Watertown, New York on its London and Ottawa systems, respectively, with Detroit, Michigan's PBS station, WTVS. A representative for Rogers said that they were replacing WQLN and WPBS for WTVS, as viewers wanted "a feed that has a higher-quality reception." WQLN and WPBS, however, had shown great concern for Rogers' move, as these are the largest cities in the stations' respective coverage areas and much of their pledges come from Rogers viewers. In addition, both stations first heard of the discontinuance not by Rogers, but by their loyal viewers.

On July 30, 2009, it was announced that Rogers will keep WPBS and WQLN on its systems, after both stations announced a fibre-based connection with Rogers. Additional funds will be allocated to complete the transition; while WQLN announced that they will spend $55,000 to provide a connection, WPBS agreed with Rogers not to disclose the cost of the fibre-optic signal for their own station.

Mountain Cablevision

On September 9, 2009, Rogers Cable filed a lawsuit in an attempt to prevent Shaw Cable from acquiring Mountain Cablevision of Hamilton, Ontario, on the basis that Rogers and Shaw had effectively agreed to divide the country in half, Rogers in the east and Shaw in the west. This suit was defeated on competitive grounds and the Shaw acquisition allowed to proceed.

In 2013, Rogers announced it was going to purchase what was Mountain Cable to bring it under the Rogers wing. (pending CRTC approval)

Quick Start Menu

In late January 2010, Rogers Cable launched a quick start guide widely panned as lacking useful features and causing customers to perform extra, unnecessary work to change channels.

In February 2012, Rogers launched a new IPG with Whole Home PVR for its x642 model devices.