TekSavvy Blog

Hey Gang,

As you know, the single most important thing that TekSavvy prides itself on, indeed that we have built our reputation on is the quality of our customer service, and our close relationship with our subscribers. Over the last several months issues have arisen regarding our cable internet products that have caused the quality of our service to suffer, and created difficulties for some of you.

We have been working diligently to address these issues, mostly by using every means possible to encourage Rogers to remedy the problems, which only they are able to fix.

What are the issues?

It is our understanding that Rogers is (a) modifying its equipment, causing disconnections as equipment is transferred in and out, and (b) not monitoring IP address allocations down to localities as needed.  In turn, as they make modifications IP addresses are being depleted in certain network areas, while other locations have an abundance (more than actually needed) of IPs.  In anticipation of demand and for technical reasons,  TekSavvy has given Rogers 80,000 IP addresses to allocate for our customers, of which 40,000 are not assigned to customers at this time. This is NOT an issue about insufficient  IP addresses supplied by TekSavvy, but rather an issue of proper allocation of those addresses, through  planning, monitoring and communication on Rogers’s part.

The delay continues at this point because  Rogers has embargoed any work on the network during the holidays.  It is their standard seasonal practice and we have not yet been able to mobilize them to provide the necessary emergency service.

What are we going to do for our customers experiencing these problems?

Having said all that, there remains the inconvenience to our subscribers. Regardless who is responsible for the outages, the responsibility to do whatever is within our power to minimize your inconvenience lies with us.  Accordingly, TekSavvy has decided to provide the following remedies:

1. Needless to say, all applicable credits will be given for any downtime that affected subscribers have experienced.

2. In addition, we are offering a DSL package on a short-term basis, to quickly get you up and running if you are experiencing prolonged outages.  Here are the details for our short term remedy:

Get Temporary DSL services priced at no cost:

We would like to temporarily offer you our 16MB DSL package for you to use until the DHCP issue affecting you is resolved.

We will waive:

• The $99 activation fee
• $55.97 Monthly Service Charge
• Band rate monthly service charge(if you require a dry loop)
• $19.99 Dry Loop Activation Fee (if you require a Dry Loop connection)
•  $75.00 Modem & $10.00 Modem Shipping (if you are unable to obtain a DSL modem, TekSavvy will ship one out to you at no charge). You will be responsible for returning the modem within two weeks of your temporary DSL account’s cancellation. A deposit for the equipment may be charged to your CC, however upon the return of the equipment you will be credited.
• The activation process for DSL service is 5 business days. If you require a free temporary dial-up service while your DSL connection is being installed, please ask the sales associate when placing the order.
• This connection is a 16M/1M connection with a bandwidth cap of 300GB/month

Please call our office now if you require a quick, no-cost temporary resolution to the outage problem.   Advise the associate that you are experiencing a DHCP outage and would like to take our temporary DSL package to get you back online.

I sincerely apologize for the inconveniences caused by these cable outages. We are continuing to use all of our resources to remedy this problem once and for all. In the meantime we remain grateful for your continued understanding and support. We need it!

Best Regards, and a happy new year to you all,

Marc – CEO/TekSavvy

It’s that time of year again!  TekSavvy is pleased to bring back our 12 Days of Giveaways sweepstakes!  The level of Internet access TekSavvy provides is, we believe, unmatched in Canada: high data caps, no contracts, low prices. What could possibly make this better? How about a Boxee box that gives you full and easy access to your favourite Internet media – streaming, searching, sharing – all through your TV, and with no more setup than plugging it in? Oh yes, and no contracts there either.

What if we gave you twelve chances to win one of those Boxee boxes? We are. Starting Boxing Day, December 26, and for each of the twelve business days after that, so ending on January 10, we’re drawing a name a day to win one of twelve Boxee boxes from D-Link. You have to be Canadian, and you have to be 18 or over. That’s easy. And you have to fill out the form on our Facebook page. That’s here, and it’s easy, too. So is the mathematical skill-testing question, especially for TekSavvy customers, who have already proven they’re smart!

We’ll post the winners’ names here and on Facebook and Twitter, and, of course, we’ll let each winner know individually.

TekSavvy connects you to the world. Boxee puts that world together for you. Enter today for your chance to win, and best of luck.

Happy Holidays!

Tina Furlan

Director, Marketing/TekSavvy

Before becoming CEO of TekSavvy, one of my responsibilities was to manage our network and gauge capacity to ensure new and existing clients got the best possible experience. That means I know a great deal about capacity. We do not have a capacity shortage; in fact we have plenty. The issue at hand is that our vendors are not delivering us the capacity requested, the capacity we need to provide all our existing clients with the best possible experience, reduce congestion and confidently sign up new clients and grow our business.

At great cost to TekSavvy, our senior leadership team and I have decided to stop signing up new clients in those areas where there is a lack of capacity from Rogers to us. We call it a stop-sell.

This decision to stop signing up new clients is very rare and, to the best of my knowledge, TekSavvy is one of the first Internet Service Providers in Canada to take a step this drastic to protect the interests of its existing clients.

For example, at the Dupont POI, there has been a stop-sell in place since September 26, 2011. More than two months have gone by and TekSavvy is still putting prospects on a wait list instead of signing them up right then and there. We are doing this because we are dedicated to protecting our existing clients from congestion during peak times.

This week, I received a phone call from an executive at Rogers telling me the outlook is not great but that there is some good news. It appears Rogers will be able to provision 4 links to some important POIs.

Unfortunately, the Dupont POI is not one of them. About Dupont, that executive said Rogers is aiming to add 2 to 3 links around mid-January. I’m awaiting another call that provides more details I can share with you. I will do everything in my power to get at least one link for Dupont so our existing clients can get better performance over the holidays.

I was told by another reliable source that Rogers is having capacity issues at 151 Front, one of the central data centre facilities in Canada. I understand the real solution is a major upgrade to those facilities at 151 Front, for which they are currently working on getting approval.

My source said this could take up to 12 weeks, as the hardware comes from Japan and it is manufactured and shipped on demand.

I’ve dealt with this stuff personally before and things can usually be sped up to some degree but, of course, each situation is different.

For TekSavvy, the interim solution is to leverage other vendors. Those other vendors are looking at delivering additional capacity via, for example, Cogeco, which is where the additional capacity for Dupont in mid-January will likely come from.

From Rogers’ perspective, TekSavvy is a very big client, with 70+ gig links. It’s in Rogers’ best interest to treat us right. Many apologies have been rendered and I truly believe those apologies are sincere.

I learned something more from my source at Rogers that appears to be another of the major reasons we are having all these issues. While many companies order gig links from Rogers, the vast majority do not have the heft to use them to their full capacity.

TekSavvy’s links were provisioned like any other link orders, not taking into account the fact that we had every intention of using them to their full capacity. Rogers didn’t quite grasp the strain we were adding until it became crippling.

All I can say to you, loyal TekSavvy advocates, is that this situation really sucks and I’m very sorry for the inconvenience.

I have faith that once we get through this, Rogers will fully understand our needs. It already appears Rogers is tooling up to handle our capacity needs. Now it’s just a matter of time before our affected existing clients get back to speeds they are used to and TekSavvy is able to take on new users.

Marc – CEO/TekSavvy

On November 18^th, we blogged about the fact that some of our cable Internet clients in Ontario were experiencing DHCP issues and were completely offline. At its peak, this issue affected approximately 1,200 clients. Believe us, we were, and remain, as frustrated as you. We have been pressing the CRTC and Rogers at our highest levels and theirs to get this fixed, once and for all.

The good news is we now have some (good news, that is):

· 95% of those 1,200 clients are back online

· DHCP issues at three major POIs, Bloor, Scarlett and Wolfedale, have largely been resolved

· Because the number of users affected has greatly decreased, wait times in our call centre have decreased as well

· As promised, credits will be issued to those who experienced downtime

Other news: Approximately 70 cable clients remain affected. Toronto and North York are the two areas in which the majority of DHCP issues are ongoing, especially the McNicoll POI. As well, rolling outages may occur as further node splitting upgrades Rogers’ cable lines. That is, Rogers disconnects, then reconnects, and then remembers to move your IP address to the new equipment… in a perfect world. Possibly, given the frustration we have experienced to date, the last step will be forgotten, as it was for some of our customers last month. We are fighting hard to ensure no one’s IP address is “left behind”, and fighting, too, to be given advance notice of wherethe rolling outages may occur.

How we are taking action: We continue to press Rogers for attention on this, but, unsatisfied, we got in touch with the CRTC, which in turn has engaged Rogers. Although we currently do not have an ETA, we anticipate results shortly and will update you the minute we hear back.

What you can do: Be assured this does not mean anyone expects you to sit back (in front of a dark monitor) and take it. Let us know if your outage exceeds a few hours. On our side, we’ll do our best to keep you informed and, most importantly, connected.

Pierre Aube Jr – VP Operations/TekSavvy