Results tagged “telus”

When it comes to holding customers in seething contempt, few corporate entities do it with more blatancy than the Canadian telcos. And they know customers hate them—that's why Koodo (a brand owned by Telus, though you'd never know it) mocks the industry's despicable practices in their advertising. But when three biggies control an entire market, forcing users into long-term contracts and deliberately muddying their fee structures, the notion of customer service is merely an insignificant byproduct of offering a service to customers.

For a year now, several of Canada's ISPs, including Bell, Rogers, Cogeco, Shaw, and a few others, have been throttling BitTorrent transfers, frustrating subscribers and internet wholesalers like TekSavvy. Two weeks ago, we noted that the CRTC was investigating the throttling practices of Canada's ISPs, and while the formal hearings won’t begin until July 6, 2009, the commission's deadline for public submissions is only two days away. So far, if February is any indication, it looks like the net neutrality crowd is winning the media campaign. Last week, the major ISPs undermined their position when they released statistics to the CRTC that showed that the growth in total internet traffic volume declined in Canada between July 2005 and August 2007. These statistics raise an important question: if network traffic growth is slowing down, then why are network management policies necessary all of a sudden? More likely than not, certain ISPs are choosing to slow down access to the forms of media they either sell, or hope to sell. It's not a coincidence that Telus, who has shown little interest in online media, doesn't throttle its customers.

Federal Industry Minister Jim Prentice has demanded a meeting with the honchos from Bell and Telus so they can explain to him exactly why they decided to charge their pay-per-use users 15¢ per received text message, calling the decision "ill thought-out." Canadian technology users are consequently planning to demand a meeting with Minister Prentice to ask him to explain ACTA and Bill C-61, calling them "ill thought-out."

A day after Google called out Bell for throttling BitTorrent traffic, and a few days before Rogers releases the iPhone in Canada to significant customer dissatisfaction (the latest news is that Apple won't even be selling iPhones from their own retail stores because of Apple's dissatisfaction with Rogers' pricing plans), Bell and Telus have decided to up the ante, lower the telecom bar, and infuriate their customers even more.