Interesting response from Bell Wi-Max technical support.

[octopi]

My grandpa lives in an area where dsl/cable is not available, his only option was Bell's WiMax service.

It involves an antenna that's mounted on the side of his house, and points at one of Bell's cell towers. We've had their service since November, and it was working well until about March, since then its been very unpredictable, on and off throughout the day. Finally I was told the following by bell "The tower you are on has too many people on it." I was given two options "accept the service as-is", or "cancel". Oh and if you get Bell Wi-Max with the outdoor antenna, you have to sign a 2 year contract, and because of that, if I cancel I may have to pay termination fees.

They actually told me to accept the service as it is, not working the majority of the time! Not for anything I've done, because they over sold the service and don't have enough capacity to support the number of users that are on it! This is ridiculous!


Jeb

[DemonWasp]

Sadly, this is very common, especially with Canadian ISPs. There's one big company (Bell) that owns the majority of the telephone lines, and then there's the cable. Either way, the customer gets the short end of the stick - overcharged and under-served, in general.

Your only recourse is a class-action lawsuit, or accepting it. Lawsuits are expensive, so I'm assuming "accept it" is the only real option here. At least you could write your MP and tell them what you think of Canadian communications companies.

Monopolies suck.

[Zeroth]

Actually, find your contract, if you can. I assume you kept your copy? Check the language of the service agreement. If they say that you will get such and such service steadily or so, then you have a way to get them. You can cancel, not pay any fees, since they broke the contract first. If, however, it mentions peak throughput, or burst anything, they they're still living by their agreement.

Another recourse is if they have raised the prices anytime since the contract was signed. If they have, without getting a newly signed contract from anyone(you or your grandfather), then they have again, broken the contract and you don't have to pay fees. Find a couple of contract lawyers, see if any of them will consult with you for a cheap price, or so, depending on the size of the fees. Even if you end up losing money, its still better than paying Bell another dirty cent. I'd rather pay a lawyer $1000 than pay $100 in extortionist fees. Not good business sense... until you realize that money is going to someone whose job it is to help YOU, instead of to a company that just does not care.

[Tony]

Seems sketchy. In the contract that signs you up for 2 years, does it mention anything about Bell having to uphold at least a certain standard for their service?

If not, I think there's got to be some consumer protection act about perceived/expected quality of services.

If they are telling you to cancel, it really sounds like they are breaking something in the contract first. It also should be in their interest to get some of the customers off the service peacefully and reducing demand up to capacity, rather than pissing everybody off and risking a class-action lawsuite.

Edit: Zeroth got to the same point first.

[octopi]

I haven't spoken with Bell's billing yet, the lady on tech support said she didn't know but I *MAY* have to pay termination fees, I'd have to check with Billing about that. I'm guessing they'll let me out of it without any fees, but its still very annoying, I don't understand why they'd oversubscribe their service so much.

[Tony]

Because that's what Bell does. I've heard things about Bell oversubscribing their SMS services, and plans on introducing fees for _receiving_ SMS messages. So if you and your buddy are both on Bell for your cellphone plans, each message gets paid for twice.

Oh, and apparently Bell sends out some text messages to their customers themselves too. Conflict of interests anyone?

[btiffin]

Bell agreements almost always state "upto" in any time or speed promises. Upto includes zero in court I think.

Best of luck of course. Someday, we may have enough nerds in positions of power that the untapped fibre will be opened and (most of us) will be able to claim speeds closer to what they enjoy in Japan.

Canada will always have costly "edge cases" regarding universal communications standards. Some towns of 15 people cost millions to service, so we all pay. A good thing imho, but our size and the remoteness of some citizens will always cost us all; either in overall speed/reliability or cash. S'okay dat.

But that should not let the big three off the hook for the remaining 98% of the customer base. Vocal complaining and well written large media pieces that make them look like bad citizens or overly stupid are about all we can hope for, for now.

Ending with; in the main and in the large, Canadians enjoy a pretty good ride, global standards wise in my humble (yet, know no other way having no experience) opinion.

Cheers

[andrew.]

A few years ago, Bell charged me for the highest speed internet when it was really their light version. After about a year, we were like WTF, why is everyone's internet faster than ours. We phoned Bell and it turned out we had no high-speed DSL in our area. We said a nice F-U to Bell and switched to Rogers. I couldn't be happier with 8 MBPS.

Bottom line, Bell sucks for everything except home phone and maybe cell phone.

[Zeroth]

btiffin @ Mon Jul 21, 2008 5:02 pm wrote:

Bell agreements almost always state "upto" in any time or speed promises. Upto includes zero in court I think.

Best of luck of course. Someday, we may have enough nerds in positions of power that the untapped fibre will be opened and (most of us) will be able to claim speeds closer to what they enjoy in Japan.

Canada will always have costly "edge cases" regarding universal communications standards. Some towns of 15 people cost millions to service, so we all pay. A good thing imho, but our size and the remoteness of some citizens will always cost us all; either in overall speed/reliability or cash. S'okay dat.

But that should not let the big three off the hook for the remaining 98% of the customer base. Vocal complaining and well written large media pieces that make them look like bad citizens or overly stupid are about all we can hope for, for now.

Ending with; in the main and in the large, Canadians enjoy a pretty good ride, global standards wise in my humble (yet, know no other way having no experience) opinion.

Cheers

Those "costly" edge cases are in fact a financial goldmine, and have been for Canadian companies. Fiber optics, broadcast satellites, innumerable advancements to the GSM and GPS designs due to the variability of landscape in Canada, and I could go on. Oh, and battery technology, last year we were the leader(a company in Burnaby), and Japan's stolen it back. We have a very up-to-date telecommunications research industry... Rogers and Co. just don't want to pay for it.

This whole thread is a great explanation of why delivering lower-quality services or products to make more money is not a feasible long-term strategy. Bell will eventually oversell too much, and lose too many customers. Then they'll make big spending movements, improve the service, and voila, customers come back. Wouldn't it be smarter to not lose those customers in the first place?

[Tony]

Zeroth @ Tue Jul 22, 2008 11:32 am wrote:

Bell will eventually oversell too much, and lose too many customers.

The problem is that in many cases there is no one to loose customers to. It's Bell or Rogers or no service at all.