A View on View :: Rogers' VOIP Plans

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the blog - examines the world of telecom and technology from a distinctly Canadian perspective.

the person - lives in Toronto, CA with his wife and three children, and works as director of community with PlanetEye Inc.

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Rogers' VOIP Plans

by Mark Evans on Tue 28 Jun 2005 07:00 AM EDT | Permanent Link

The big question in the Canadian VOIP market these days is when Rogers will launch its cable telephony service. CEO Ted Rogers has talked about July 1, which is the 20th anniversary of Rogers Wireless, but Rogers' PR folks are sticking a "mid-summer" timeframe. UBS Securities met with Rogers COO Nadir Mohamed yesterday, who heads up the company's cable and wireless divisions. UBS believes Rogers will roll out telephony in a few weeks, and push digital cable and phone service as a way to maximize each truck roll. UBS also expects Rogers will price its telephone service at an "attractive discount" between (Shaw $55 a month and Videotron ($15.95 to $30 a month). I've got Rogers high-speed and cable so it will be interesting to see what kind of deal Ted's going to offer me. Something in the $30 a month range with Web-based features (voice-mail to e-mail, easy ways to configure services such as call-answer and call-forwarding) and a healthy amount of LD would probably lure me away from Sprint.

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VOIP Services, Competition

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Re: Rogers' VOIP Plans

by Anonymous on Tue 28 Jun 2005 09:31 AM EDT | Permanent Link

...would probably lure me away from Sprint

Which is, ironically, owned by Rogers :) Is the cannibalization of their own business offset by the fact that they're moving the customer (in this case, you) off the PSTN, which is, ultimately, owned by Bell?

Re: Rogers' VOIP Plans

by Anonymous on Tue 28 Jun 2005 12:50 PM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

I guess there is no way around the whole bundling issue if it represents savings from the Bells of the world. What about being locked into a contract or the fact that customers of Rogers will be dependent on one network which will deny them one of great attributes of VoIP, portability. This might change once the Rogers/ Sprint integration is completed, but for my dime, I like to travel with my number.

Re: Rogers' VOIP Plans

by Anonymous on Tue 28 Jun 2005 03:10 PM EDT | Permanent Link

I take it Rogers will be rolling out an access-dependent service then, like Videotron, etc?

When at home (I'm not, for the summer) I am a Videotron Internet customer -- locked into the 12-month agreement. It's not pretty.

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\n"; #File retrieval failed - exiting function pass back old values. return $this->GetParameters($AdFilePath); } #TODO - Replace with file retrieval $ad_params = $this->GetParameters($AdFilePath); $new_ad_params = $this->_newRowPosition($ad_params); #TODO - Add SlidingExpiration for REFRESH Dates that dont change # Example: REFRESH DATE permanently affixed to 2 days prior, every 30sec refresh will attempt a new page download # Temp Solution is to UPDATE FILE_DATE with AD_ROTATE_DATE $new_ad_params["AD_FILEDATE"] = $new_ad_params["AD_ROTATEDATE"]; #echo "Writing new ad
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\n"; return $new_ad_params; } } /** BEGIN Backwards Compatibility Routines */ if (! function_exists('array_combine')) { function array_combine($keys, $values) { foreach($keys as $key) $out[$key] = array_shift($values); return $out; } } if (!function_exists('fputcsv')) { function fputcsv($filePointer, $dataArray, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { // Write a line to a file // $filePointer = the file resource to write to // $dataArray = the data to write out // $delimeter = the field separator // Build the string $string = ""; // No leading delimiter $writeDelimiter = FALSE; foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) { // Replaces a double quote with two double quotes $dataElement=str_replace("\"", "\"\"", $dataElement); // Adds a delimiter before each field (except the first) if($writeDelimiter) $string .= $delimiter; // Encloses each field with $enclosure and adds it to the string $string .= $enclosure . $dataElement . $enclosure; // Delimiters are used every time except the first. $writeDelimiter = TRUE; } // end foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) // Append new line $string .= "\n"; // Write the string to the file return fwrite($filePointer,$string); } } if (!function_exists('fgetcsv')) { #TODO - Remove or ??? #Originally built to handle PHP4 style of fgetcsv $CSVstruct = array('Sep' => ','); function fgetcsv($handle, $length=1024, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { $rows = ParseCSVStream(fgets($handle),"\n",false); return $rows[0]; } } // append a CSV row containing data converted from source array $data. Actual conversion is done by ExCSVRowWalker() function AppendCSVRow($data) { global $CSVstruct; array_walk($data,'ExCSVRowWalker'.($CSVstruct['OutEOL']=="\n"?'N':'')); $CSVstruct['File'] .= implode($CSVstruct['Sep'],$data).$CSVstruct['OutEOL']; } // returns an array of rows (each row being an array of columns) with parsed data. Returns false when conversion fails. Auto-detects Win/Mac/*nix newline characters, which are converted all to the sequence specified (defaults to $CSVstruct['OutEOL']) for your convenience. function ParseCSVStream($data, $newline="\n", $associative=true) { global $CSVstruct; $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\r","\n",str_replace("\r\n","\n",$data)); if ($newline!="\n") $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\n",$newline,$CSVstruct['File']); $CSVstruct['OutEOL'] = $newline; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = 0; $CSVstruct['Error'] = false; $CSVstruct['EOF'] = false; $res = array(); if ($associative) { $titles = ParseCSVRow(); while (($row = ParseCSVRow())!==false) { $newa = array(); //possible optimization: might use array_combine() - requires PHP 5 for ($col = 0; $col0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',str_replace($CSVstruct['OutEOL'],"\n",$item)).'"'; } function ExCSVRowWalkerN(&$item) { if (!is_numeric($item)&&(strlen($item)>0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',$item).'"'; } // read next line from buffer. function RowInput() { global $CSVstruct; if ($CSVstruct['EOF']) { return ""; } else { $pos = strpos($CSVstruct['File'], $CSVstruct['OutEOL'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); if ($pos===false) { $CSVstruct['EOF'] = true; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); } else { $pos1 = $CSVstruct['Seek']; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = $pos+1; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$pos1,$pos-$pos1); }; }; } /** Initialize ad_network variable */ $ad_logic = new ad_logic($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); $ad_network = $ad_logic->ad_network($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); ?>