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OneWorld9
join:2010-12-09
East York, ON

OneWorld9 to TSI Marc

Member

to TSI Marc

Re: TekSavvy - glorified reseller, not ISP

said by TSI Marc:

This is a complicated issue.

...

What's the right thing to do?

I'll assume you're asking me (and others) this question, and that it's not rhetorical.

I think what you should do (assuming you want to be an ISP, and not simply a reseller) is outlined in my longer post above. How you arrive at that level of service (both short and long term), that's for you to figure out - I did provide some suggestions to consider. Beyond that, if you want to hire me to consult with TSI about this, I'm open to suggestions.

sbrook
Mod
join:2001-12-14
Ottawa

sbrook

Mod

If TekSavvy was a "reseller of Rogers services", then the world would be different. You'd be paying very very close to Rogers rates, and be paying UBB with their ridiculously low caps.

It's time you got that idea out of your head (of being a Rogers reseller). That they have to pay Rogers or Bell to get from their network to you is the limit of Rogers involvement. A reseller would be Rogers from end to end.

There are precious few "tools" that one can create that allow diagnosis of connection problems. Heck, Rogers don't provide any to themselves either, relying on tracerts that they commonly make invalid assumptions from, and the modem stats that they make invalid assumptions from.

If you look at any cable MSO elsewhere in the world, they all suffer the same problem ... because it's hard to isolate problems except when they stand out like a sore thumb ... like an upstream signal strength of 55 dBmV

Tracerts with timeouts in them take a lot of working out to determine where a problem may be, if there's a problem at all. I can show you tracerts that are utterly useless and will lead you to the wrong assumption.
OneWorld9
join:2010-12-09
East York, ON

OneWorld9

Member

said by sbrook:

It's time you got that idea out of your head (of being a Rogers reseller). That they have to pay Rogers or Bell to get from their network to you is the limit of Rogers involvement. A reseller would be Rogers from end to end.

I oversimplified TSI to a "reseller" to point out that the service is comparable to one, since many of the issues related to support are in Rogers' hands, and they have to reach out to Rogers to get things done - I totally understand they are a "hybrid". The point is they have a long way to go, in my mind, before they compare with the level of reliability and support I received when I was with Rogers. What good is it that you can talk to someone locally, who is fluent in English, if they can't resolve your issue? I don't call TekSavvy to chat with someone. I'm also not going to debate why that is - I do agree a lot of this is Rogers' fault. However, I'd like to see TekSavvy get to that level of reliability / support and even better, if at all possible. Higher costs aside, my connection *was* better with Rogers - for *several years*. Downtime was infrequent, and usually a matter of hours (never longer than a couple of days), and I only had a slow speed issue (lasting long enough to warrant support) *once* - it was quickly repaired by a tech putting a filter on my cable, because the signal was too strong. This is exactly the same connection (I have been at this address a long time) that I'm using with TekSavvy - when I switched, no tech came out to install anything. However, in the past less than two years, there have been numerous support-related issues / headaches.

As I stated in my first post, the reason I switched to TekSavvy was primarily cost related - specifically, related to caps and UBB - and the reviews suggesting that TekSavvy was a "better ISP".

I do agree the incumbents shouldn't have so much control over the "last mile", and they shouldn't be allowed to charge such high prices. However, we need to be clear about this - if TekSavvy is giving us these great deals at the expense of support, then people need to be informed of this and make their decision of which ISP to go with when they are informed. I joined TekSavvy with the impression it was "better" than the incumbents. My experience shows otherwise. TekSavvy's marketing suggests they are "different, in a good way". I suppose that depends on your definition of "good". I don't agree that "good" includes subpar service. I'm paying less, but I didn't agree to pay less to get an unrealiable connection and no real support. I think everyone deserves to know the truth about the service they can expect.

Is it nice that the CEO and staff talk to us in a forum? Of course it is. Will talking with the ISP actually make the service better? Time will tell.