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| Company type | Division |
|---|---|
| Industry | Cable Services |
| Founded | 1967; 58 years ago (1967), inBrampton,Ontario, Canada |
| Headquarters | Toronto,Ontario, Canada |
| Products | Cable television Cable Internet |
| Revenue |  $1.95 billionCAD |
| $708 millionCAD | |
Number of employees | 5,922 (2004) |
| Parent | Rogers Communications |
| Website | rogers |
Rogers Cable isCanada's largestcable television service provider with about 2.25 million television customers, and over 930,000Internet subscribers, primarily inSouthern andEastern Ontario,New Brunswick andNewfoundland and Labrador. Rogers Cable is a division of Rogers Communications Canada Inc., the operating unit ofRogers Communications Inc.[1]
As of October 2024, the division does business asRogers Xfinity, as part of abrand and technology licensing agreement with U.S. cable providerComcast.
Rogers was one of the first cable-system operators in Canada, having secured licences covering much of the then city ofToronto in the late 1960s. One of the first important acquisitions was in 1979, when Ted Rogers purchased a controlling interest inCanadian 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 inIrish cable companies inDublin,Galway andWaterford. 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 theUPC 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.[citation needed] These assets were acquired by Paragon Cable in 1989 for over US$1 billion; Paragon in turn was acquired byTime Warner Cable several years later.[citation needed]
Rogers continued to buy other operators; the largest such acquisition came with Rogers' 1994 acquisition ofMaclean-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.[citation needed] In March 2000, Rogers agreed to swap systems withShaw Communications, exchanging its systems in British Columbia for Shaw systems in Quebec and Ontario. The deals gave Rogers and Shaw more consistent service footprints in Eastern and Western Canada respectively.[2]
In 2008, Rogers announced a takeover offer forAurora Cable, a cable service provider in York Region, Ontario.[3]
On September 9, 2009, Rogers Cable filed a lawsuit in an attempt to prevent Shaw Communications from acquiringMountain Cablevision ofHamilton, Ontario, on the basis that the two companies had agreednot to encroach on each other's respective territories (Rogers in Eastern Canada, Shaw in Western Canada), and speculated that Shaw would make other acquisitions in Eastern Canada after buying Mountain. Shaw argued that the agreement violatedunfair competition laws.[4] The suit was quickly thrown out by the Ontario Superior Court, arguing that the non-compete agreement limited competition, and that Rogers' claims of future harm were "speculative in the extreme".[5] The sale would eventually go through later that year. In January 2013, as part of a larger exchange of assets between the two companies, Shaw pulled out of Hamilton and sold the Mountain Cablevision business to Rogers.[6]
In 2010, a corporate reorganization resulted in Rogers Cable being dissolved as a distinct legal entity, and its operations absorbed into Rogers Communications Partnership, ageneral partnership jointly held by Rogers Communications and its subsidiaryFido Solutions.[1]
In October 2015, Rogers announced that it would begin to offer4K-compatible set-top boxes, beginning in Toronto and expanding to its other markets in 2016.[7] Telecasts of 4K sporting events fromSportsnet andTSN began to be carried on these set-top boxes in January 2016.[8][9]
In December 2016, Rogers announced that it had scrapped a planned project to develop its ownIPTV-based television platform, and would instead licenseComcast'sX1 platform.[10][11] The new platform, Rogers Ignite TV, launched in August 2018, which includes a "cloud DVR", voice-enabled remote (specifically a Comcast-developed model which won aTechnology and Engineering Emmy Award in 2017),[12] and the ability to aggregate linear television and online video content in a single interface.[13] Rogers began to migrate existing digital cable customers to Ignite in October 2019.[14] Rogers announced a deeper technology partnership with Comcast in April 2024, and began rebranding its Ignite products as "RogersXfinity" later that year.[15]
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Rogers Cable currently serves communities in most of Canada, including most larger communities in Newfoundland and Labrador, nearly all of New Brunswick, selected areas of easternQuebec near the New Brunswick border (includingCarleton-sur-Mer), Ontario (including nearly all of the Toronto area as well as the areas ofOttawa,London,Kitchener-Waterloo,York Region,Barrie, and parts ofHamilton), parts of Manitoba (includingWinnipeg), parts of Saskatchewan (particularly inMoose Jaw,Prince Albert,Saskatoon, andSwift Current),Alberta, andBritish Columbia.
Over the years, and at various times, Rogers has owned all or part of various cable operators serving areas across Canada, includingVancouver,Victoria,Calgary, andNorthern Ontario. All of the systems inWestern Canada were traded toShaw Communications in late 2000, in exchange for that company's assets in Ontario and New Brunswick, and many of the others were sold toCogeco. On April 3, 2023, Rogers acquired Shaw, adding its Western Canada portfolio back to the company.[16][17]
Entered the Province through an asset exchange withShaw Communications, which had previously acquiredFundy Communications.[18]
Operates in almost every major community, with the exceptions of Sackville and Port Elgin, which are served byEastLink.
Entered the Province by acquiringCable Atlantic.[19]
Large acquisitions: cable operations ofFamous Players (Canadian Cablesystems) andMaclean-Hunter.
Through Rogers Cable, Rogers is the largest shareholder (41.4%) inCPAC, a national public affairs and politics cable channel based in Ottawa, that consists of both an English- and a French-language feed. CPAC's main programming consists of live and delayed coverage of the House of Commons and the Senate.
Rogers Cable previously operated a chain ofvideo rental stores known as Rogers Plus; it launched as Rogers Video in 1988, after which it grew by acquiring smaller chains. The Rogers Video chain andRogers Wireless retail stores were merged into a single chain known as Rogers Plus in 2007. After 23 years in business, Rogers Plus discontinued movie and game rentals in 2012, and the chain's remaining locations were re-tooled as Rogers stores for selling the company's services.
In the beginning of 1995, Rogers along with several other cable companies, added a number of new cable channels under anegative 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".
In July 2009, Rogers Cable announced that on August 18, 2009, they would be replacingPBS affiliatesWQLN ofErie, Pennsylvania[24] andWPBS-TV ofWatertown, New York[25] on itsLondon andOttawa systems, respectively, withDetroit, Michigan's PBS station,WTVS. A representative for Rogers said that they were replacing WQLN and WPBS with WTVS, because viewers wanted "a feed that has a higher-quality reception."[25] 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 through Rogers, but through their loyal viewers.
On July 30, 2009, it was announced that Rogers would keep WPBS[26][27] and WQLN[28] 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,[28] WPBS agreed with Rogers not to disclose the cost of the fibre-optic signal for their own station.[27]
The introduction of Rogers' "Navigatr" user interface in mid-2015 was heavily criticized by users for being poorly designed and harder to use. Rogers began to address these issues with a new version it began to deploy in December 2015.[29]
On May 6, 2016, Rogers was criticized when a nightly 2:00 a.m. reboot of NextBox set-top boxes caused viewers to miss the conclusion of anNHL playoff game between theNashville Predators andSan Jose Sharks, which had gone to triple overtime. The broadcast was, ironically, beingcarried by Rogers-owned networkSportsnet 360, promptingThe Globe and Mail to compare the incident to theHeidi game. A Rogers spokesperson apologized for the incident and stated that they were investigating the issue, as the reboot was not supposed to occur while watching live programming.[30]
