Rogers rejects complaint about @Home announcements on community channels

Rogers Cable Inc. denies that it is surreptitiously promoting its high-speed Internet service under the guise of informing current clients how to shift their email addresses. Canada’s largest cableco says it merely ran public service announcements (PSAs), a claim rejected by a group of independent ISPs. The matter came to a head on January 9 when the Independent Members of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (IMCAIP) filed a complaint with the CRTC over a series of spots the cableco ran on its community channels and as inserts in American specialty channels (NL, Jan. 14/02). IMCAIP maintains the spots, which tell subscribers how to shift their email addresses from @home.com to @rogers.com, were thinly-disguised ads for Rogers’ high-speed service. The company disputes this. "Customers were not, for example, encouraged to visit our e-commerce web site (which facilitates sales of our services and products)," Ken Engelhart, VP regulatory law, writes in his response to the commission. "Rather they were asked to go to the conversion web site…which was specially-designed to walk customers through the step-by-step transition process." Engelhart states that it is "implausible" to suggest the firm was trying to increase its subscriber base through the spots. "Indeed, one might conclude that the announcements had the opposite effect of a sales or promotional message," he adds. In IMCAIP’s reply, written by lawyer Greg Kane of Stikeman Elliott, the group alleges the notices do not fit the CRTC’s criteria to be considered PSAs. The terms, as laid out in Public Notice 1999-205, say the messages should educate the public about issues, encourage support of a worthy cause, or promote the work of a non-profit group seeking to enhance the quality of life of people. The Rogers advertisements fail all these tests, IMCAIP argues. "None of the messages is targeted at a general audience," IMCAIP avers. "Rather, each is intended to reach a narrow and defined sub-set of the audience, namely those viewers having a commercial and contractual relationship with Rogers to receive the Rogers@home high speed Internet service." The association wonders why Rogers did not bother to inform any of its viewers that other ISPs exist that could provide alternative service. The cableco maintains the circumstances revolving around the @Home failure were "extraordinary" and "unique in the history of the provision of cable services in Canada." That doesn’t cut any ice with IMCAIP, which argues that just because something is extraordinary, which the association does not concede, doesn’t change the ads into PSAs. "Second, bankruptcy is an unfortunate, but foreseeable, outcome of commercial relationships, particularly in the new ‘dot.com’ economy," IMCAIP states. Rogers points out that when IMCAIP first expressed its concerns in December, before it filed the protest with the commission, the cableco acted quickly. It removed its 30-second and one-minute spots from community and U.S. specialty channels. It continued to run a 15-minute program about Internet migration on the community and pay barker channels. After the ISPs listed this show in its January complaint, Rogers pulled it from the pay outlet. "This program was on the pay barker channel through inadvertence and we regret this error," Engelhart writes. Since the notices are no longer being shown, there is no need for any of the relief sought by IMCAIP, he states. The association was asking that the ads be pulled and that its own members be given free time to push their own service. Engelhart rejects that last request. "Clearly, the circumstances giving rise to the Rogers@Home e-mail conversion were and are unique," he tells the commission. "They do not, in our view, warrant any kind of reciprocal treatment of CAIP members."

Rogers rejects complaint about @Home announcements on community channels

News | February 11, 2002

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