p2pnet news view P2P | Freedom:- If this looks like a paen, it is —- to three people who, on our behalf, are making Bell (et al) here in Canada and Comcast in the US learn a, for them, painful lesson: they can’t treat their customers like dirt, any more.

And the message is by default also being delivered to other major ISPs elsewhere in the world.

The three stand out as North America heroes (actually, one of them is a heroine ) in the battle to make the major service providers understand they depend on us, and not the other way around.

The three are:

• In Canada, Ottawa Gal, an Ontario woman who became so angry when she found out she was being taken to the cleaners by Bell, she took trouble to learn about many of the complex technical ins and outs surrounding traffic throttling (and other issues) so she could address them intelligently, and who was the first to go into detail about Bell’s so-called ‘traffic management’ scheme.
• Rocky Gaudrault who runs TekSavvy, a Bell ISP client based in Ontario who in turn uses Bell ’services’  to keep his own customers in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia happy and online, and who’s forcing Bell to understand the basic concept: the customer is always right, not a dupe to be screwed, blued and tattooed at every opportunity.
• Across the border in the United States, Robb Topolski, the dedicated music lover and Net protocol expert who was the first to point the finger at Comcast, the huge American provider who’s just been ordered by the US Federal Communications Commission to halt its traffic throttling activities.

Ottawa Gal is on holiday but she’ll be re-starting her reports in p2pnet when she’s back, Robb is still front and centre in the battle in the US as chief technology consultant at Free Press and Public Knowledge, and Rocky recently filed a highly articulate, highly pointed submission to the CRTC after Bell cynically tried to use TekSavvy data in support of its efforts to cheat its own customers.

One of the many things Bell Canada hasn’t done is to look for reasonable technical solutions to improve its services and keep its customers coming back. Instead, it’s driving them away having treated them as idiots who’ll stand still for anything it cares to dish out.

Things are somewhat different at TechSavvy, however.

“Many efforts to adapt/change to this new way of doing internet business,” writes Gaudrault, continuing»»»

“This isn’t an overnight process as there are many things I’d/we’d like to change. Our immediate focus has been, since the start, to try and buy/provide strong equipment to both take the load and abuse you all throw at it. The Juniper equipment and the supporting hardware, thus far, have done so. The amount of money invested in these are double and triple what other ISPs would have spent, so we’ve had to make a choice on which side of the double-edge sword to land on —- up-time vs accommodations, and we chose stability first.

As it stands, here’s what we’ve done:

1 – Spent a lot more on equipment for up-time.
2 – Spent a more on employees to ensure proper customer handling
3 – Automated as much of the internals as possible to not overdue the employee costs.

Future plans and thoughts

Here’s where we’re having difficulties.

We’re trying to figure out where we should throw our next efforts as a result of our lovely Beaver friends.

If the throttling and metering is stopped and we can get control of things, we can truly focus on customer care items, but if it doesn’t stop, we’ll have some serious choices to make.

If the throttling/metering continues/happens:

I think we’ll have to raise the rates to $34.95 (or close to) so we can install our own equipment up and remove Bell’s wherever we can.

With less than $10/customer gross income, it’s not enough to make what will need to be a major monthly investment in additional facilities (not that we’d be able circumvent Bell 100% due to their repeaters, which don’t allow equipment in). The unfortunate thing is we have to wait because while this is going on, Bell is contesting our right to this same access (that they’ve been saying. why don’t they do their own infrastructure…. Tariff 5400!.

Bottom-line, we’re going to be playing the safe card on much of these needs, at the same time doing what we can on the light-load side, until we know which warpath to follow.

The end result has to be what’s good for the marketplace and in my mind, if Bell keeps with this crap/attitude, someone has to fight them, and if that happens to be our calling then so be it. But it’ll require a little help from everyone if we’re to do so.

The last week, through the last TekSavvy filing, has been a little bit of a historical review on our relationship with Bell and the marketplace.

We’ve always said we’d side with the people and do right by them, so that’s what we plan to do.

Let’s first learn from the past events, look at the present events and fix what isn’t working (which right now is CRTC related mainly), then let’s put pressure on future developments.

Current activities:

1 – We’ve put the East Coast on hold for now until we know what the deal is with Bell.
2 – We’ve sent more money to the lawyers to pay for the recent filing and have also given lobbying funds.
3 – We’re negotiating a monthly budget with the lawyers to keep this battle up on a monthly/daily level.

We don’t plan on letting Bell get away with anything, even grey, anymore, until they’re made honest again.

Bell was a great company once and I seriously think they can get there again with a little coaxing (unfortunate it should come at the expense of regulatory/court time/money).

4 – Discussing with other ISPs to possible band together to either coop money or pool money to do various activities to open doors.
5 – This is the most important part.

We’re not staying quiet. We’re talking with people, educating them, not stopping for anything.

If we’re to beat what’s bad about big business strategies, it will come with people removing their submissive, sheep hats for a second and not accepting the stupid mind-games that are seen as “deals”.

Short-term gains never work out in the long run: you end up paying double. Just look at mortgages for a quick example. The banks want you to do a mortgage rather than pay the 20%-25% down to get a line of credit.

Why?

Because by the time you’ve paid your house in a 25 year mortgage, you’ll have paid twice its value. Not even close to the same amount invested with a line of credit.

The system, across the board, is set up to make people poor/submissive.

Old-school business is to get a large market-share fast, as Bell’s done since 97-98, and from there, crank up the spin game and rape the marketplace until someone steps in and says, OK, that’s enough.

But we think it’s time to say that’s enough.

Don’t you!?

But the three aren’t only forcing the ISPs to get the message The Customer Is Always Right.

In the digital 21st century, there’s a new maxim: The Customer Must Also Be Kept Informed.

Stay tuned.

. .Stumble It!

go into detail – p2pnet traffic shaping digest, April 19, 2008
traffic throttling activities – Stop throttling traffic, Comcast ordered, August 1, 2008

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 7:07 am and is filed under Freedom, P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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