While Cogeco has been pushing the envelope on its DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts, the Canadian cable operator is catching some flack for charging $50 to upgrade to the faster wideband speeds.
A Cogeco customer on DSL Reports’ website said that the company was charging its DOCSIS 1.0 or DOCSIS 2.0 users the $50 fee, even when they purchase the modems at stores and do self-installs.
Earlier this month, Cogeco announced it had increased the speeds and data caps on its top-two DOCSIS tiers in the Québec and Ontario areas where DOCSIS 3.0 had previously been launched.
Cogeco’s Ultimate 30 tier was upgraded to Ultimate 40, with download speeds increased from 30 Mbps to 40 Mbps and upload speeds from 1.5 Mbps to 2 Mbps. The bandwidth cap increased from 100 GB a month to 175 GB.
The Ultimate 50 tier was changed to Ultimate 60, which includes download speeds of up to 60 Mbps and upstream speeds of up to 2 Mbps, as well as monthly data caps of 250 GB instead of the previous 150 GB.
Cogeco also launched its new Turbo 20 tier, which has download speeds of up to 20 Mbps, upload speeds of up to 1.5 Mbps, a monthly data transfer capacity of 80 GB and a cost of $1.50 per additional GB, up to $50 per month.
“This sucks particularly because Turbo 14 costs more than Turbo 20, a DOCSIS 3.0 package,” the Cogeco customer posted on DSL Reports. “To save money by upgrading to Turbo 20, they charge you $50.”
Cogeco didn’t respond to an inquiry about the $50 upgrade fee by deadline this morning.