Trick Question

TekSavvy posted their interim rates for ADSL2+ service this week. The rates themselves are reasonable but the $99 activation fee is a shock. The fee applies even if you are already a TekSavvy customer!

As usual, it's Bell's fault. They asked for the fee in the interim tariff and the CRTC approved it. For this fee, you get two Bell service calls. One connects you up to the remote DSLAM. The other installs a dedicated jack for the service. Stated this way, the fee sounds reasonable. And, Bell is on the hook for any wiring faults.

All very reasonable, until you discover the fee is about three times what Bell charges its own customers for the same services. So, does this look like a competitive market to anyone? (By the way, that was the trick question.)

UBB Cancelled

The folks at TekSavvy celebrated that the 1 March implementation of UBB is cancelled, by raising the monthly caps from 200GB to 300GB. They credit the increase to the cost savings they obtained from their non-Bell providers. I found this distinction mildly humourous. The larger cap is bound to attract subscribers away from Bell even if the speeds that TekSavvy can offer are likely to be much lower, at least for now.

Whether UBB is completely dead, remains to be seen. The Industry Minister has promised to overturn anything that resembles UBB after the CRTC completes its 60 day review. When politicians make promises, I only believe them when they actually follow through, and not a moment before. So yes, I'm skeptical.

Dialup

I'm pleasantly surprised that Blogger is usable on dialup. Why the heck am I on dialup? I'm using my backup account because TekSavvy is dealing an ARP DDOS attack as I write this, so the service is basically useless until they sort out the problem. Yes, that's a nineteen page (and counting) thread about the outage! That thread tells you everything about the type of customer TekSavvy has, i.e., lots of geeks. The fact that TekSavvy's CEO is posting in the thread at this hour tells you everything you need to know about the company.

The Little ISP That Could

The survival of all small, independent ISPs is at stake and they all know it. Bell has been slowly eroding any competitive advantage that the small ISPs may have had with tariffs such as usage based billing. The small ISPs are fighting back and somehow my ISP, TekSavvy, finds itself leading the charge.

Don't believe me? The CRTC will hold hearings that will examine allowing independent ISPs to co-locate DSLAMs in the central offices. And right there, presenting second only after Bell, is TekSavvy. CEO Rocky Rocky Gaudrault explains why. They indeed are the little ISP that could.

There's no guarantees that the CRTC will allow co-location. If anything, recent decisions would seem to indicate favouring the ILECs. However, the folks at TekSavvy seem rather confident about success and have already announced plans for how they intend to raise money for the DSLAMs with a $2 increase for basic DSL service.

I actually don't have problem with the price increase but it is an inefficient manner in which to build infrastructure. The ILECs didn't have to do it this way. When they were starting out, they got plenty of government support, which is how public infrastructure should be built.

TekSavvy Testing IPv6

My ISP, TekSavvy Solutions, is beta testing native IPv6. I'm almost sure that they will be the first Canadian ISP to make IPv6 available to the end user. One benefit is that Bell apparently can't throttle IPv6 (yet). So, apart from the obvious PR benefits of offering IPv6, Teksavvy is giving its users yet another way of sticking it to the man. Really, do I need any other reason to want IPv6? ^_^