PatrickP59
| Legal Status of Fight Vs Bell DPI/Throttling
Does anyone know how the lawsuit is going?
I assume that Teksavvy is currently suing Bell but
I havent heard any information on it.
PAT |
|
thm655321
join:2003-09-01
Canada | Teksavvy lost at the CRTC level. |
|
Atticka
join:2001-11-26
Montreal, QC | reply to PatrickP59
You probably won't hear anything. Talking about closed legal proceedings could jeopardize the case. |
|
angry squirrel
@vaxination.ca
| reply to PatrickP59
If you have not hard about a lawsuit, it is probably because there is none happening.
Bell was smart in getting the CRTC to annouce mock public hearing process to "further debate" the issue. This makes an appeal difficult since the CRTC can argue that the outcome could change after the public hearing process.
currently, a number of telcos have been asked to aswer the following questions:
»www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Lette···204a.htm
Deadline is jan 13th. These questions are designed to provide no meaningful information. |
|
Anonymous666
@teksavvy.com
| Isn't it way past time that we all declare our lack of confidence and extreme dissatisfaction with the CRTC to those who can actually do something about it?
We need a huge grassroots movement to remove these idiots and to put in place folks who are impartial, and most importantly, have not worked for one of the major telco's in the past as most of the CRTC board have! |
|
oxymoron69
join:2004-11-10
Belleville, ON
 ·TekSavvy Solutions..
| I think anyone who cares enough about this issue has already declared their lack of confidence in our elected and appointed(CRTC) officials.
The sad part is, while there are politicians who listen (Charlie Angus et al) the majority mainly ignore these issues and pander mainly to the aging populations concerns... lower taxes, health care, lower taxes blah blah blah
Until we can stop dollars from swaying opinions in parliament, there's nothing we the common folk can do to stop this abuse :-(
Shit, even UNcommon folk like Rocky can't even stop these rapists, not that they're not trying and god willing... will smite our enemies and dazzle their customers with blazing speeds and intelligent customer service. |
|
Bell_Abused
join:2006-10-07
·Bell Sympatico
| reply to Anonymous666
said by Anonymous666 :
We need a huge grassroots movement to remove these idiots and to put in place folks who are impartial, and most importantly, have not worked for one of the major telco's in the past as most of the CRTC board have!
Its just not the CRTC fuill of bell and Ex-Bell executives placed in these cushy jobs.
-They are also on the telecom review panel (60% are ex or still Bell Emplpoyee's)
-They are in the top position of the comptition bureau (the first body we went to to complain about this and they washed their hands of it)
and more.
What ever key position in the gov and anything to do or may have to do with telecom, Bell has people placed in it.
Some argue that there is no choice since there are the people who have the experience with telecom policy.
But I say time for a clean up. |
|
Mephisto13
join:2008-05-16
Gatineau, QC
·Bell Sympatico
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| reply to PatrickP59
If you are asking about the class action lawsuit, I have not heard of anything lately...
»www.consommateur.qc.ca/union-des···e_id=284
Keeping my fingers crossed!
--
"With your shield or on it!" - spartan code
"No matter where you go, there you are." - Buckaroo Bonzai |
|
Sirdit
@aasp-irc.net
| reply to PatrickP59
I think he is under the impression that Teksavvy is suing Bell to stop the throttling.
I dont think this is happening because I doubt Teksavvy would spend all that money on a legal team when they arent losing all that much business.
Also there is the probability that Bell would terminate their contracts with Teksavvy if there was a lawsuit, which would leave teksavvy totally screwed. |
|
shepd
join:2004-01-17
Kitchener, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| said by Sirdit :
Also there is the probability that Bell would terminate their contracts with Teksavvy if there was a lawsuit, which would leave teksavvy totally screwed. I doubt that, but Bell will pull dirty tricks on purpose with customers they don't like. When iStop throttled their payments to Bell (Yes, they actually did throttle their payments, quite funny now the shoe is on the other foot) and lawyered up against Bell, Bell cut off their AGAS for over 3 days. But Bell never cut them off permanently.
iStop went under shortly after as customers left them in droves, leaving me without an option for a while (waaaaaah!). |
|
fired squirrel
@vaxination.ca
| Istop's story was quite different from what you just wrote.
In fact, you can look for "istop" or "Ralph doncaster" on the CRTC web site and you will find quite a bit of information about this. Some of these also provide an interesting history of what is now the GAS tariff because Ralph has started well before the CRTC got involved and before the GAS/AHSSPI packaging was setup by Nexxia.
Bell pulled the plug permanently on Istop. IGS agreed to accomodate stranded istop customers by creating logins for them and hoouring their istop monthly fares. This is why istop customers were able to recover internet connection within a few days.
the newsgroup can.internet.highspeed has a good record or that soap opera.
TSI Gabe can provide far more details if you are interested, he was in the thick of it.
Bell essentially cut off the AHSSPI links to ISTOP (both to toronto and ottawa routers), as well as cut the 100bps link between 151 and ottawa.
ISTOP customers could no longer do PPPoE with the ISTOP routers, and from the internet, you could no longer reach the iSTOP servers based in ottawa (because of lack of 100mbps link). S the mail and web servers were unreacheable.
(HSA service had been discontinued a few months before and business customer told to fuck off, or if Ralph was more polite that day, told to find another provider.) HSA stopped being offered the year before.
ISTOP still had transit from Cogent and that lasted a few MONTHS after the shutdown), and a temporary web server was setup in toronto that could inform customers of what had happened, and the staff moved the real web server to another ottawa location where it was hosted and remains functional today.
This was used to inform former customers how to switch to IGS and how IGS would handle them. |
|
Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
·Colbanet
| Actually, you didn't quite get it right either.
For one thing, it wasn't IGS, it was Cybersurf (3web), as is clearly evidenced by the iStop news page (»istop.com/news.html). IGS was not, as far as I can tell, owned by Cybersurf at the time (although they are now).
For another, iStop gave over a month warning about the discontinuation of HSA service, so that's not exactly a "fuck off". |
|
sleepy squirrel
@vaxination.ca
| Ralph had had some talks with IGS before all of this unravelled and was aware they were being taken over by Cybersurf. My speculation is that Ralph had sought to sell his business before it went down. That would have involved selling the customers without selling the debts incrred by ISTOP and/or the numbered company.
At the time of ISTOP's demise, IGS was part of Cybersurf, but still operating as a separate entity. And ISTOP customers were handled by IGS infrastructure.
It was not long after that that Cybersurf started to rationalise and integrate IGS with its other networks.
In terms of HSA' ISTOP stopped accepting new HSA customers a year before the end. And during that time, many HSA customers were "fired" (told to leave with little warning). Then he annoucned the end of HSA serviec alltogether and this is where the one month notice was.
From my readings of CRTC filings on this issue, I would *GUESS* that Ralph's original NEXIA contract was favourable for HSA. He was charging customers less for HSA service that Teksavvy was being charged by Bell. On the one hand, he wanted to quit his Nexxia contrat to get the lower GAS rates, but I guess that the Nexxia contract gave him lower HSA rates than the post NEXXIA ones. |
|
Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC | Ralph fired many customers, GAS or HSA  |
|
shepd
join:2004-01-17
Kitchener, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| reply to fired squirrel
said by fired squirrel :
Istop's story was quite different from what you just wrote.
In fact, you can look for "istop" or "Ralph doncaster" on the CRTC web site and you will find quite a bit of information about this. Some of these also provide an interesting history of what is now the GAS tariff because Ralph has started well before the CRTC got involved and before the GAS/AHSSPI packaging was setup by Nexxia.
Bell pulled the plug permanently on Istop. IGS agreed to accomodate stranded istop customers by creating logins for them and hoouring their istop monthly fares. This is why istop customers were able to recover internet connection within a few days.
the newsgroup can.internet.highspeed has a good record or that soap opera.
TSI Gabe can provide far more details if you are interested, he was in the thick of it.
Bell essentially cut off the AHSSPI links to ISTOP (both to toronto and ottawa routers), as well as cut the 100bps link between 151 and ottawa.
ISTOP customers could no longer do PPPoE with the ISTOP routers, and from the internet, you could no longer reach the iSTOP servers based in ottawa (because of lack of 100mbps link). S the mail and web servers were unreacheable.
(HSA service had been discontinued a few months before and business customer told to fuck off, or if Ralph was more polite that day, told to find another provider.) HSA stopped being offered the year before.
ISTOP still had transit from Cogent and that lasted a few MONTHS after the shutdown), and a temporary web server was setup in toronto that could inform customers of what had happened, and the staff moved the real web server to another ottawa location where it was hosted and remains functional today.
This was used to inform former customers how to switch to IGS and how IGS would handle them.
From what I remember, as a loyal iStop business HSA customer, he did discontinue HSA service first. He gave us plenty of notice--enough our internet never went down between me switching to a completely different ISP (GTO, actually) and his notice, and I dawdled until the last moment because I didn't want to go.
The best documentation of the saga is here:
»www.istop.com/news.html
However, it is widely known iStop throttled their payments to Bell, and that's the funny part.  While it appears you are correct, Bell did disconnect iStop in the end (by that point I wasn't paying attention so much as I was an HSA customer and had left already), they didn't do it by surprise at that time, and I believe by that point Ralph was just tired of the ISP business and the Bell fight and was happy to close up shop. From what I recall from the newsgroups at the time, that was the general impression he gave. Further to this, at least he didn't just close shop and leave people hanging, he did switch them to another ISP. I believe, in the situation he was in, it's the best he could do.
He also was happy to tell bad customers to leave. And, as a business person myself at the time, I did the same thing. It's bad business policy to assume the customer is always right, otherwise you end up being Eaton's.  |
|
cold squirrel
@vaxination.ca
| >he did discontinue HSA service first.
Yep. But for about a year before official HSA cut off, he stopped accepting new HSA customers, and whenever an HSA customer called with a problem it was [donald trump mode] "you're fired" [/donald trump]
The way I see it, (speculation on my part), his 3 year contract with Nexxia gave him a very sweet deal compared to HSA pricing, but a raw deal compared to GAS pricing.
He tried to argue that his 3 year contrat should be voided because Nexxia didn't exist anymore so he could benefit from the lower GAS prices. He was turned down by CRTC. A contract is a contract and when a company is bought by another (or subsidiary re-integrated into Bell, contracts survive).
When his contract finally lapsed, my guess is that he was now stuck having to pay the full HSA price which was higher than what he was charging customers.
Ralph's deal with Bell/Nexxia included dispute resolution clauses that required involvement of the CEO. He knew that the CEO would only get involved once the debt got big enough. By january of the year of istop shutdown, he owed 1.8 million according to CRTC documents. My guess is that Bell pulled the plug the second he reached the 2 million mark.
At that january (if I remember correctly, it was 2005), the CRTC began to regulate the existing GAS/HSA tariffs that had been in place for some time.
If one forgets his temper for a second, the guy was able to screw Bell out of at least 1.8 million dollars, and he knew exactly how to manipulate the red tape machine within Bell. Considering our dislike of Bell, Ralph should he a hero
If Ralph had been involved with the CRTC throttling dossier, his submissions would have been colourfull, to say the least, and it might have been an ISTOP vs BELL dossier instead of CAIP vs Bell, and the outcome might have been different because he would have responded to every Bell lie instead of just claiming there was no congestion and assuming the CRTC would be nice just because 1300 people complained.
Ralph was a pionner in offering affordable internet access for smart people with affordable fixed IP and permission to run servers etc. And he had found an innovative way to provide NNTP access: get a simple Sympatico DSL subscription and hook a proxy server to it so that all istop customers could get unlimited access to Bell's newsgroup server through that one subscription. Kludge ? you bet. But it was another way to screw Bell. |
|
mlerner
Premium
join:2000-11-25
Nepean, ON | reply to PatrickP59
Well unfortunately the end result of his actions caused the company to crumble. He may have been a pioneer but not much else. |
|
shepd
join:2004-01-17
Kitchener, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| reply to cold squirrel
said by cold squirrel :
>he did discontinue HSA service first.
Yep. But for about a year before official HSA cut off, he stopped accepting new HSA customers, and whenever an HSA customer called with a problem it was [donald trump mode] "you're fired" [/donald trump] ?
I remember calling in a couple of times during their last year, once for a service outage and once for some sort of issue with my IP address (can't recall) and never got the boot. Of course, then again, I helped his lawyers by informing them of calls from Bell regarding internet service which were directly related to us having iStop HSA...
I really feel he was booting customers that weren't helping themselves. ie: Customers that weren't calling in with a solution, or weren't calling in with useful information. He only wanted hardcore tech-savvy customers, and anyone else was outside his scope. I can imagine him booting customers that would call for things like "router help" or "what's a demarc?"
(Then again, so would I... that's why I don't run an ISP. )
said by cold squirrel :
The way I see it, (speculation on my part), his 3 year contract with Nexxia gave him a very sweet deal compared to HSA pricing, but a raw deal compared to GAS pricing.
He tried to argue that his 3 year contrat should be voided because Nexxia didn't exist anymore so he could benefit from the lower GAS prices. He was turned down by CRTC. A contract is a contract and when a company is bought by another (or subsidiary re-integrated into Bell, contracts survive).
When his contract finally lapsed, my guess is that he was now stuck having to pay the full HSA price which was higher than what he was charging customers.
Ralph's deal with Bell/Nexxia included dispute resolution clauses that required involvement of the CEO. He knew that the CEO would only get involved once the debt got big enough. By january of the year of istop shutdown, he owed 1.8 million according to CRTC documents. My guess is that Bell pulled the plug the second he reached the 2 million mark. Yeah, that's all pretty much dead on, I would only suggest that part of it was that he was shorting Bell on the HSA charges because he felt that if he was going to be held to old GAS contracts, he should have the same old benefits from the HSA contracts, which had gone up significantly during that time for new ISPs. Bell wouldn't accept this, and the CRTC wouldn't rule for the longest time, so during this time Ralph throttled his payment to Bell to what was the tariff HSA rate for when he signed the contract.
I don't know if he was paying them the new or old GAS rates. I expect it's whichever was less...
said by cold squirrel :At that january (if I remember correctly, it was 2005), the CRTC began to regulate the existing GAS/HSA tariffs that had been in place for some time. If one forgets his temper for a second, the guy was able to screw Bell out of at least 1.8 million dollars, and he knew exactly how to manipulate the red tape machine within Bell. Considering our dislike of Bell, Ralph should he a hero He is to me! That's why I was willing to snitch on Bell's poor taste advertising calls...
Of course, I've hated Bell for well over a decade. Living out in the country, their phone service was abysmal, they wouldn't even put in the effort to sell me switched 56 (or whatever Bell called it at the time). And then there was the fact it took a call to the CRTC to get them to call me back after 9 MONTHS of begging them to let me sell their satellite service. Note that I had a retail front, there's no reason they shouldn't have at least called me back.
(The CRTC call did prompt them to approve us as a dealer. By then it was too late. We'd found "alternate" satellite services to sell. No wonder Bell has such problems!)
said by cold squirrel :
If Ralph had been involved with the CRTC throttling dossier, his submissions would have been colourfull, to say the least, and it might have been an ISTOP vs BELL dossier instead of CAIP vs Bell, and the outcome might have been different because he would have responded to every Bell lie instead of just claiming there was no congestion and assuming the CRTC would be nice just because 1300 people complained.
Ralph was a pionner in offering affordable internet access for smart people with affordable fixed IP and permission to run servers etc. And he had found an innovative way to provide NNTP access: get a simple Sympatico DSL subscription and hook a proxy server to it so that all istop customers could get unlimited access to Bell's newsgroup server through that one subscription. Kludge ? you bet. But it was another way to screw Bell.
Agreed! |
|
