The long-term agreement is part of Rogers’ strategy to deliver all-IP services in the home, and will utilise its gigabit internet service, the first to be launched in Canada.
Rogers said it will launch the service with Comcast in early 2018, but will continue to up its 4K content offering in the interim.
"This partnership is great news for our customers," said Alan Horn, chairman and interim CEO, Rogers Communications. "We’re bringing our customers a world-class IPTV service with the most advanced features available in the market today. On top of that, our customers will be future-proofed thanks to Comcast’s innovative and robust product roadmap."
The decision to move to a hosted platform came as Rogers looked at how to scale its technical roadmap in order to meet the accelerating speeds of IPTV developments, Comcast said.
The deal will see Rogers discontinue any further investment in the IPTV product it had in development, meaning it will incur a pre-tax on-cash asset impairment charge of between C$475-$525 million in Q4 2016.
"We’ve seen growing desire of other operators to leverage the industry-leading innovations we’ve created at Comcast," said Neil Smit, president and chief executive officer, Comcast Cable.
"Comcast is excited to bring the experiences of the award-winning X1 platform to Rogers’ customers in Canada."
