The IT Nerd

TekSavvy and its affiliate cable company Hastings Cable Vision announced today the launch of a new IPTV service, TekSavvy TV, in the Chatham-Kent region of Ontario. TekSavvy TV will offer customers access to over 100 HD channels of sports, movies, series and kids programming including video on demand content from selected TV channels.

Customers in Chatham-Kent who wish to order can sign-up through TekSavvy’s MyAccount portal at myaccount.teksavvy.com. TekSavvy TV is currently available as an app for Apple TV, Android TV, and Amazon Fire Stick. Customers can start with TekSavvy TV Basic at $20.00 per month and then add additional theme packages ranging in price from $6.00 to $20.00 per month to get more channels of live sports, premium series, and blockbuster movies. TekSavvy TV requires a TekSavvy residential Internet subscription with a minimum download speed of 15 Mbps.

TekSavvy has been proudly serving Canadians with reliable telecom services for more than 20 years and has won numerous awards for the quality of its service and for its commitment to fighting for consumers’ rights online. With offices in Chatham, Ontario and Gatineau, Quebec TekSavvy is Canada’s largest independent telecom service company with over 300,000 customers from coast to coast.

TekSavvy Solutions Inc. calls on the CRTC to ensure meaningful consumer choice for high-speed Internet services.

In 2015, the CRTC set out rules allowing smaller Internet service providers to buy wholesale access to the large carriers’ fibre networks, so that Canadians can choose their broadband provider and benefit from competition.

Yet more than three years later, competitors like TekSavvy remain shut out from higher speeds due to unreasonable rates proposed by the incumbents. Thus forcing them to switch to the incumbents like Bell and Rogers.

In October 2016, the CRTC rebuked the large carriers for breaking its rate-setting rules. According to a regulatory application filed today by TekSavvy’s industry association, the Canadian Network Operators Consortium Inc., the large carriers overbilled smaller competitors more than $300 million that has not yet been returned.

The CRTC found that wholesale rates are grossly inflated by the large carriers when they ignore proper costing principles. Today, brazenly, they continue to manufacture new ways to inflate costs, even when given clear direction from the CRTC otherwise.

“The gaming needs to be stopped. Competitors’ investments and jobs are already in jeopardy,” said Andy Kaplan-Myrth, TekSavvy’s VP, Regulatory & Carrier Affairs. “We need immediate action by the CRTC to restore consumer choice. To do that, they need to fix proper rates, provide an interim path to higher speeds for consumers who choose competitors, and return overbilled money to small competitors,” added Kaplan-Myrth.

The CRTC is holding hearings this week to examine the retail sales practices of Canada’s large telecommunications carriers. Independent ISP TekSavvy presented to the CRTC panel this morning and here’s some highlights of what Janet Lo, VP Privacy & Consumer Legal Affairs of TekSavvy: said:

• TekSavvy believes in doing what is right for our customers and strives to treat consumers fairly and honestly. We advertise the best available price, so that our best offer is transparent to both consumers and the competitive market. Additionally, TekSavvy does not use any sales incentives, targets, or rewards to pressure employees to complete sales.
• TekSavvy offers the unique perspective of a wholesale-based competitor service provider, and the impact of misleading retail sales practices on wholesale-based competitors and competition.
• Retail sales practices occur in many contexts for telecommunications services – in a store, over the phone, at a consumer’s door, or during an installation or repair appointment. Where an incumbent telecommunications service provider uses a wholesale transaction as an opportunity to complete a sale for their retail services, this is an inappropriate retail sales practice with the potential for misleading or aggressive sales practices.
• When an end-user gets service from a wholesale-based competitor like TekSavvy, the incumbents’ technicians perform the installation and repairs for that service. Since the same technicians more often serve and sell the incumbents’ own retail services, the technician’s presence at the customer’s home gives them a touchpoint to mislead and inappropriately poach TekSavvy’s end-user to the incumbent’s retail services. TekSavvy’s intervention detailed scenarios of incumbents’ sales practices targeting TekSavvy’s end-users during wholesale-based installation and repair appointments, or providing misleading information about TekSavvy as a competitor.
• Consumers are harmed where unfair pressure is used to complete a sale or upsell, where misleading or false statements about competitors are used to win a customer, or where consumers experience unsolicited sales in their own home when they are expecting service installation or repair.
• The competitive marketplace is distorted and disproportionately harms wholesale-based competitors when misleading and aggressive sales practices occur from opportunities that arise when incumbents have a conflict of interest. As described in our intervention, incumbents have a conflict of interest when they control wholesale inputs, including dispatching technicians to install service for a wholesale-based provider’s customer, and they compete with their wholesale customers for the same retail customer.

It will be interesting to see how the big three telcos say because TekSavvy has created a narrative that surely casts them in a negative light.

TekSavvy and the Municipality of Chatham-Kent today announced a joint effort for the development of  a high-speed fibre broadband network in Chatham-Kent. TekSavvy plans to connect more than 38,000 residences and businesses in the region, starting in Chatham with plans to expand to Blenheim, Ridgetown, Tilbury, and Wallaceburg.

TekSavvy, which is Canada’s largest independent Internet service provider, is headquartered in Chatham where for 20 years it has provided Canadians with reliable telecom services.

TekSavvy intends to invest up to $26 million over 18 months in the development of its fibre network. TekSavvy has already begun construction for its fibre network in Chatham, serving its first fibre-to-the-premise customers earlier this year.

The Municipality intends to invest $6.5 million to facilitate an open-access fibre backbone connecting communities in Chatham-Kent.

Chatham-Kent CAO Don Shropshire said he is heartened that this local company is working with the Municipality in its goal to bring advanced communications services to the community.

Independent ISP Teksavvy announced yesterday the appointment of Bram Abramson as its new Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer.

Bram holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from Concordia University and a BCL and LLB in Law from McGill University. Additionally, he is an adjunct professor of communications law at Osgoode Hall Law School, a co-author of the Regulatory Guide to Canadian Television, and past chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s national Entertainment, Media and Communications Law section.

Prior to becoming a communications lawyer, Bram worked in telecom strategy and policy.  At TeleGeography, a global telecom analysis and mapping firm, he led research on international Internet infrastructure.  At the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, he worked as a Senior Financial Analyst within the regulatory body’s telecommunications branch, where he was involved with what is now the annual Communications Monitoring Report.

Coming from a major law firm, Bram will help keep Teksavvy at the forefront of protecting Canadian consumers’ communications rights in the face of growing challenges and opportunities. Which is right in line with what Teksavvy believes in. That’s great for Teksavvy.

Canadian ISP Teksavvy got handed a court decision that on the surface looks kind of bad for customers. They have to hand over the names of customers who pirate movies to Voltage Pictures. Here are the details from the CBC:

A Federal Court decision released Thursday compels Ontario-based TekSavvy to identify the customers allegedly linked to downloads of films by the U.S. production company Voltage Pictures, which is behind the likes of The Hurt Locker, Dallas Buyers Club and Don Jon.

As a result, those TekSavvy customers could eventually receive a letter from Voltage threatening legal action. Under the federal Copyright Act, statutory damages for non-commercial infringement range between $100 and $5,000.

Now that does sound bad. But here’s why Voltage Pictures may never see a dime:

But while the court sided with Voltage’s efforts to go after copyright violators, it sought to protect against the company acting “inappropriately in the enforcement of its rights to the detriment of innocent Internet users.”

“On the facts of this case, there is some evidence that Voltage has been engaged in litigation which may have an improper purpose. However, the evidence is not sufficiently compelling for this court at this juncture in the proceeding to make any definitive determination of the motive of Voltage,” wrote judge Kevin Aalto.

Aalto ordered that before Voltage can send a letter to the alleged downloaders, it must return to court to get the wording of its communications cleared by a case management judge.

“In order to ensure there is no inappropriate language in any demand letter sent to the alleged infringers, the draft demand letter will be provided to the court for review,” Aalto wrote.

“Any correspondence sent by Voltage to any subscriber shall clearly state in bold type that no court has yet made a determination that such subscriber has infringed or is liable in any way for payment of damages.”

Voltage was also ordered to pay any costs that TekSavvy incurs in identifying the customers in the case, as well as legal fees.

So. Anything that Voltage Pictures does has to be overseen by a court. Plus they have to pick up the costs of Teksavvy for doing their legwork. If I’m Voltage Pictures, that may be a huge disincentive for them to go after a single movie pirate. Of course, Voltage could always appeal or just decide the costs are worth it. We’ll have to see what happens.

According to a survey done by Canadian independent ISP and telco TekSavvy, more than half of Canadians don’t have a clear understanding of their Internet plans. In addition, 67 per cent of respondents believe Internet plans in Canada are too expensive.Am I shocked by that? Not really. I said a while ago that it costs very little for a ISP to bring you Internet access. Plus I’m not surprised that Canadians find that Internet plan offerings from ISPs are confusing. I often get called by clients to help them to make sense of what an ISP offers.

Now TekSavvy has developed a new web application to simplify the process of selecting the right Internet plan based on individual households’ Internet usage patterns. By answering a few simple questions about how their household uses the Internet, consumers can easily determine which Internet plan best meets their needs. Now this is of course slanted towards getting you to sign up to get Internet access from Teksavvy. But I have to admit that when I tried it, it pretty much pegged my needs perfectly. So it could be useful as a means to pick your plan for any ISP so that you can get the most Internet for your hard earned dollars.

The key survey highlights are in an info graphic that I’ve posted below:

I just got this question in my inbox:

I’ve been reading your posts about getting your DSL fixed and the problems you had with that. You mentioned that you were looking at switching away from Teksavvy to another provider for DSL and phone. Is that still the case? 

In short, not at the moment. The longer answer goes something like this: After my discussion with Tina Furlan who is Director of Marketing and Communications at TekSavvy to get their side of the story, I have no plans to move to another provider. I am satisfied with their response to my issue and for taking the time to answer my questions. That allows me to give them another chance. Now I will admit that “Joe Average” isn’t going to get a call from a director from a major telco. But the fact that Teksavvy even bothered made me reconsider switching.  Now, if their problems get worse, that may change, but for now I will stick with them.