Electronista has learned that Rogers Wireless is at least exploring the possibility of a plan whereby customers would pay an additional monthly fee to minimize the impact of network congestion on their data traffic. Such customers would see their data given a higher priority than that of customers not signed up for the service. Tentatively called “Data Priority Service,”, it would essentially create different tiers of service quality.
As part of the survey being sent to some current customers, Rogers is asking whether customer would pay CA$10 per month for this priority service.
It is unclear at this time whether Rogers is simply gauging customer reaction to such a proposal but it’s clear that the company is fully aware of the growing demand on its network as smartphones and other wireless data-centric devices continue to get more popular. In the US, AT&T has been facing network congestion for years in some key markets and has spent millions to upgrade its network to deal with the ever increasing demand.
Update: Rogers has responded via email to this story:
We don’t comment on rumours, but I can say that at Rogers we always design our products and services with the customer in mind. As a result, we test many concepts and ideas with our customers. Sometimes we’re actually considering launching these ideas, but often we’re just testing concepts. Many of the ideas we test never get launched based on customer feedback.
We’ll just have to see where this idea goes…