The IT Nerd

The ongoing saga of netTALK and how their Canadian customers have lost their phone numbers along with the ability to receive incoming calls is starting to resemble an episode of House Of Cards. I’ve continued to look around to see if there’s any further dimensions to this story, and I’ve found two things.

The first comes from the fact that the CRTC who is responsible for regulating telecommunications in Canada asked netTALK to join the CCTS which is the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services as they are a group that mediates disputes between telcos and the public back in 2013. They are also the group that I recommended that users affected by this fiasco complain to. But that apparently never happened. So the CRTC sent a very nasty letter to them threatening “enforcement action.” Here’s part of the letter for you to read:

This letter is to inform you that it appears to the Commission that NetTalk.com, Inc. (NetTalk) is not a participating service provider of the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services Inc. (CCTS) as required by the Commission.

As described further below, NetTalk is required to respond to the Commission by 22 November 2013. Failure to respond could result in enforcement action against NetTalk.

Further digging has indicated that on the CCTS website, netTALK is currently listed as a “Non-Compliant Provider” that has been referred to the CRTC for enforcement action. Now joining the CCTS is not an option, it’s a legal requirement. Thus, this brings to the forefront two points.

• It appears that netTALK has been breaking Canadian law for some time.
• Whatever “enforcement action” that was threatened by the CRTC in 2013 appears not to have happened. At least there’s no evidence that I can find that it has happened. I will keep looking though. Thus one has to wonder what the CRTC was doing between 2013 and now, and if they could have stopped the pain that netTALK’s Canadian users are going through at present. It also makes me wonder what the CRTC can do for users who don’t have phone service from netTALK today seeing that the metaphorical horse has already left the barn.

In light of the latter, I have sent out this Tweet to the CRTC:

.@CRTCeng It seems that you have threatened @nettalk with an "enforcement action" because they didn't join the @CCTS_CPRST . Why no action?

— The IT Nerd (@The_IT_Nerd) January 19, 2016

If I get a response, I’ll let you know.

The other thing that I came across today is the Twitter account of Samer Bishay. You might recall that he used to be the president of netTALK and is now apparently running the show at Iristel. He was also mentioned in the SEC documents that I posted yesterday. I took a look at what he has to say and…. see for yourself:

You have no idea how much trouble you are in @netTALK . I'm CANADIAN and I'll make sure Canadians get their #'s back but not with @netTALK

— Samer Bishay (@SBishayIRIS) January 19, 2016

Wow. That’s really professional. I’m not sure what message he was trying to send, but it doesn’t exactly cast him in the most positive light.

Expect more updates to be posted as this is a story that seems to evolve quickly.

This entry was posted on January 19, 2016 at 11:13 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Iristel, netTALK. 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.