TORONTO – It is expected that Rogers Communications will announce Rogers Ignite Gigabit Internet today at noon during a press event at the Rogers Centre.
The service will be available later this year in parts of Toronto, along with Vaughan, Markham, Richmond Hill, Ajax, Pickering and Whitby. With downstream speeds up to 1 Gbps (1000Mbps) Ignite Gb will then be available across the company’s cable footprint, from St. Thomas, Ontario to St John’s Newfoundland, in 2016. No pricing details are yet available.
The move is a swing back at Bell, which launched a Gb fibre plan in Toronto and other areas earlier this year. The difference with Rogers (and other cable companies) boosting their internet speeds is that thanks to the DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1 specifications, Rogers Cable can leverage the cable already installed to boost speeds and it doesn’t have to upgrade its plant as heavily as the telcos must.
(Going GB for Bell is going to cost more that $1.14 billion, according to its announcement, and Telus said Friday it will spend $1 billion in Vancouver alone to fibre that city for 1 Gbps speeds. It's not yet known how much it will cost Rogers, but it will be substantially less.)
In Ontario and out east though, Bell and Rogers two companies will now be in a renewed battle to own the home, with the internet as the centrepiece, because broadband demand continues to rise by leaps and bounds thanks to increased streaming of video content as well as the growth of video calling.
Rogers says internet data use is up 700% since 2009 and expected to grow another 400% in the next four years.
Watch for this official announcement later today, along with other announcements we suspect will also be revealed in the sports and video space, in order to take advantage of these new speeds.
