Rogers responds to Competition Bureau findings, vows to fight them in court

In a press release issued this afternoon, Rogers claimed they would dispute the Competition Bureau’s finding of misleading advertising in court.

The Bureau said that Rogers made misleading statements to consumers about the network quality of new entrants into the wireless business. The Bureau said they could find “no discernible difference in dropped call rates between Rogers/Chatr [Chatr is Rogers’ discount brand] and new entrants.”

"We’re surprised by the actions of the Competition Bureau," said Ken Engelhart, Senior Vice President of Regulatory, Rogers Communications, in the press release. "We have extensive, independent third party testing to validate our claims and we stand by our advertising. We will vigorously defend this action in court."

To back up their claims, Rogers included a comment from Todd Stone, president and CEO of Score Technologies, a Lynchburg, Virginia-based company that provided data to Rogers.

"We’ve completed extensive testing in coverage areas across the country and there’s no question that the testing validates the advertising in market," said Stone, in the same press release.

The Competition Bureau wanted Rogers to pay a $10 million fine, as well as pay restitution to affected customers, stop the misleading advertising, and issue a corrective statement. The Bureau said that their findings came after “an extensive review of technical data, obtained from a number of sources.”

It looks like there’ll be no quick end to this one. Stay tuned, folks; it could take years for this thing to work through the courts.