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By brians, November 28, 2009 3:45 pm

This week I got a preview code for a new product Rogers was launching, Rogers on Demand Online. (the same week they laid off a significant number of middle managers). They are working well to move the TV experience online, but could do better in moving the online experience to TV.

The concept is to take the On Demand experience which Rogers has on their cable systems (which often crashes my box) and move it online. My friend Ben Lucier has done a great job summarizing the experience and I’d agree with almost all his impressions of the system.

It’s got a lot of the features that I have on my on-demand box on my TV – so simulates that experience well. Where I think it misses the mark is moving the online experience to TV. Let me point out a few examples of ways the system could combine the online experience with the TV experience to make the system truely kick-ass, as well as solve some security issues.

One of the things that caught my eye in the list of TV shows is the category “Last Chance”. In the online world, there’s no such thing as Last Chance. If you make a show available, why wouldn’t it be available forever? This is the world of the long tail – and users expect to find everything from the just released, to an old episode of Sesame Street from 15 years ago, if you plan on bringing it to the system.

The other feature I thought could improve the experience, and make it more like my online experience is to allow comments and a social aspect. The shows are buit into a screen which shows some other relevant and related content below, but why not let the users get involved and comment on the show itself. It might not have to appear directly (I wouldn’t want to read something which gives away the surprise ending) but having a button to comment on and interact with other watchers of the show would make me feel more involved.

Connected to this was my thought: “Hey, I should give my password out to a bunch of people and let them share in my on-demand experience.” It would seem to present a problem for Rogers if they are only going to make this available to Rogers subscribers. But the easy way around that problem is to build a set of social features into the site, or even connect it with a FaceBook login. The more social features they build in the less likely users will want to share their accounts, because the account will become part of them. The more personal info I attach to the account, the less likely I’m going to share the account, in the same way I’d never share my FaceBook account with a friend.

All in all, it’s a great move forward for Rogers. This morning I watched part of a West Wing episode on my Rocket Stick (yes, it’s working now) and both that product and this shows that Rogers is ready and willing to cannibalize it’s current products and customers for the sake of new technology. They have become more adept at this in recent years – willing to take the risk. It’s impressive and can show how nimble this behemoth still is.

Update: The Rogers on Demand Twitter folks (yes, Rogers is rocking the social media these day with twitter people) pointed me to this site which shows some of the upcoming features. Upcoming features are what they say they are – upcoming. But at least they are thinking about it….

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By brians, September 2, 2009 11:44 pm

About 2 weeks ago (20 days ago specifically) I picked up a Rogers Rocket Stick from a Rogers Reseller before an event I was organizing for HomeStars. It is now bricked and unusable because I upgraded my operating system to Snow Leopard.

While I write this blog post I have been on hold with Rogers for over 3 hours, and finally got through to a Rogers representative who has put me on hold again. She has told me that it is my fault that I upgraded my operating system and that, unfortunately, my useless Rocket Stick is now my responsibility. If I want to cancel my service, which I can’t use because I’ve upgraded to Snow Leopard, I’ll have to pay a $500 cancellation fee.

Just to put this in context, Snow Leopard is not a sudden and unexpected move from Apple. Developers have had plenty of time to make sure their software is compatible. There were a few applications on my computer that I’ve had to upgrade this week (for free) because of my Snow Leopard OS upgrade, and all have gone smoothly.

The Rogers sales rep told me that it was my fault that I upgraded, and unfortunately I have to suffer the consequences. (blaming your customer is never good customer service). She also said it was up to the folks at Sony Ericsson, and that it was not in Rogers control. Anyone who has worked with Rogers knows the dynamic between supplier and carrier. If Rogers wants to make it work, Sony Ericsson will make it work – they have global customers at stake, outside of Rogers.

What this says for innovation in Canada is appalling. But the important point is that there is no excuse for Rogers not to have the Rocket Stick fix in their back pocket right upon the Snow Leopard release. With the iPhone partnership, Rogers should be keeping well up to date with Apple’s updates, and have as much hardware compatibility as possible. The Rocket Stick, to Rogers, is the vision of the future – connectivity everywhere. It should work with the latest and greatest software by the second most deployed operating system globally. No excuses!

(and no reason, of course, to be on hold for 3 hours before talking to a sales rep! – but that’s another blog post)

Update: Actually you’d think I’d have more of an update. But a Rogers tech support agent (actually it seemed like a fairly senior one) did get in touch with me. I sent him an update by email last Thursday the 3rd of September. So far nothing back. Will continue to update as the situation progresses.

Update (October 16): Apologies for the late update, but about 2 weeks ago Rogers solved the problem. Turns out there are many types of Rocket Sticks, and the old one didn’t work on Snow Leopard. I’ve now been upgraded to a ZTE version, and it’s working fine. Have to give some Kudo’s to Rogers, but I did get a significant hit on my bill for the upgrade. Ouch!

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By brians, July 19, 2009 9:40 pm

There aren’t many independent cable companies left in Canada. Most of the small ones have been scooped up by Rogers, Shaw, Cogeco and Videotron, the four remainders. Last Thursday Shaw cable reached across the expanse of Canada and picked up one of of the the juiciest prizes, Mountain Cable, which ran the cable operations on the highlands part of Hamilton, as well as in many of the local towns nearby. The remainder of Hamilton, the downtown core, was ‘owned’ by Cogeco.

Mountain Cable was founded and owned by the Boris Family. About 5 years ago they took a different tack and hired John Piercy, an ex-AllStream and Bell executive to build a voice business. John looked back to his old company and hired Allstream to assist in building a first class home phone service. The success showed in the numbers. Upon the sale Mountain Cable had 27,000 voice customers out of 41,000 cable customers, and impressive 65% penetration rate – all those customers being a loss to Bell’s local service.

Mountain Cable was known for having excellent customer service. Friends who lived in the area confirm this. It’s rare when you talk to someone who really says “I love my cable company”. I certainly can’t say that in Toronto.

John has moved on to his next venture. Look out for Atria Networks – a combination of the local utility telecom companies which was consolidated and had an investment by Birch Hill Equity Partners, TD’s private equity arm. Good luck John.

As for Shaw’s new investment, one could argue that running a cable network a distance from the core business could be challenging. But Shaw has Big Pipe, and can connect the new service to their old network easily. Locals must be wondering whether the customer service will remain. Other observers might wonder whether Shaw will deal the subscribers to Rogers or Cogeco.

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By brians, June 29, 2009 12:02 pm

Michael Geist and others have reported that Rogers has again started inserting substitute content into the webpages of its customers. They originally started doing this in Decmber 2007 and backed off due to some media outcry, and perhaps pressure by Google.

Some are saying that this is a big outcry over nothing, but I think there’s a point to be made here. With both this example and their DNS error page, and it’s not just that they are doing this. They are doing it poorly.

If you look at the design and text of the pages they are inserting Rogers could do so much better.

Example 1: Michael Geist’s example page.

The text takes up half the screen. It’s not clean and tight. It even goes so far as to mention ‘if you’ve upgraded already – ignore this message’. If you’re going to take over someone’s screen, shouldn’t you already know if they’ve upgraded?

This could be improved with a small corner box at the top of the page – unobtrusive, which brings up a more detailed message about what they are looking for here. Instead this ugly box takes over much of my page and doesn’t add a whole lot of value – especially since it will have come up somewhat randomly for the user.

Example 2: Let’s take the more relevant example, the DNS error page. In my example here I entered for “gogle’ in my URL bar and reached a page with some ugly ads, bad search links and sponsored results. It’s quite clear what my mistake was here. Quite likely I was looking for Google. Why not just have a simple, clean interface outlining what the DNS server thought I was looking for. Google doesn’t seem to have a problem figuring this out. Even better, why not just send me to Google if the URL was close enough.

If you’re going to do page takeovers (and I’ll leave my comments about this until later), they are a chance to communicate and interact with your customers. Why does Rogers insist on looking like a 3rd tier cybersquatter, rather than craft an elegant and page which adds value to their customers experience? They can’t be making that much money from the URL redirect page, and instead raises the ire of Net Neutrality advocates for diminishing their internet experience.