Allied Telesis @ Yokota Rocks/Sucks

Even though we have sent AAFES the petition in effort to see the Allied Telesis contract enforced, we are still collecting signatures and will submit an updated version to AAFES on December 1’st.  Please continue to encourage your friends, neighbors and coworkers to visit our site and review the Allied Telesis saga for themselves.

Not that this is a big success, but we recently discovered that Allied Telesis is offering printed versions of the telephone directories in their store.  When our site first launched, we catalogued areas of non-compliance, one of which was the providing of telephone directories to the residents of Yokota.  We would like to think that we had something to do about it, but odds are AAFES decided to enforce this portion of the contract.

Sign Our Petition. Do Your Part To Help Yokota!

In a recent posting on our site, we made comment on a signer’s remarks regarding allegations that Allied Telesis did not make good on some employees paychecks for a period of several months (see New One For Me…WOW!).  We immediately put out a call for anyone who could verify the story posted by the signer, but have yet to hear from anyone who could verify the allegation.

AAFES official response to the allegation:

Lorenzo Salgado AAFES Yokota GM
October 28th, 2008 at 11:55 am

Dear Blogger,

I would like to resolve this matter. According to the Allied GM, the allegations are false. In order for AAFES to verify this claim, I will need the name of the individual claiming to have worked without being paid. AAFES takes this very seriously. Please have the individual contact me at 225-3700. I will verify and work this personally to ensure this is taken care of.

Larry Salgado
Yokota AAFES GM

Additionally, Allied Telesis’s Yokota General Manager provided us with a statement:

“The general statement and allegation that no payments were made to military dependents working in the main (BX) office for a period of 2 to 4 months is just not true. We can confirm that there are no outstanding claims from contract employees for unpaid invoices.”

BruSe C. Green
Yokota General Manager
Allied Telesis Capital Corporation

As a consequence of not receiving any corroborating information from the community aside from the signer, we are marking the allegations as a bad lead.  This is by no means a condemnation of petition signer’s remarks as they were probably made in good faith, rather this is us pulling back from the allegations until we can confirm them via 3rd party information.

We take the validity of information posted on this site very seriously.  While much of what we write is can be construed as opinionated, it is based on official accounts and/or documents we have in our possession and our interpretation thereof as well as countless hours of phone conversations with other companies to gain valuable insight.  We are always more than happy to receive information for us to look in to, but we try to have at least 2 or more independent verifications of rumors before we post such information as in the case of our recent article regarding the debts owed by Allied Telesis Yokota to other companies such as SAIC.  In this case we had been monitoring that particular nugget for about six months now and finally was able to gain an independent verification from a 3rd party who was in no way connected to our original source.  As you can see, not everything we hear about is written about until it can be verified.

If you know of a story you would like to see us write about, please contact us at:  webmaster@alliedtelesissucks.org.

As Allied Telesis Yokota continues to advertise that they will be installing time-shift servers to move channel content to a more palatable time frame for all to watch, we have been making phone calls to various content providers to verify that it can indeed be done legally.  After several phone calls and countless time on hold, of the representatives we could get to talk with us, there seems to be mixed opinions as to the legitimacy of the capability.  In one camp they are saying that they would never authorize any end provider to time-shift content as it would be similar to providing rebroadcast rights, which they never do, hence the possible legal turmoil.  In the other camp, there is mixed feelings about the possibility, but as they have allowed other Japan based providers to record and broadcast to their subscription base, that it may be acceptable here as well.

I still firmly believe that Yokota will not see the start of the time shifting servers until AAFES stops being able to push the TiVo’s off the shelf.  Remember that AAFES is offering the TiVo service and not Allied Telesis though it was part of their pitch to AAFES.  The question lingers whether or not those of us who purchase a TiVo will continue to be able to use it after IVVD (Integrated Voice Video Data) comes back up and online. I can not wait to see what the Freedom Of Information Act turns up on that nugget in terms of is it still coming back as Allied had once said, or is it going to disappear as they probably are hoping it will.

On another note, our lawyer finally tracked down where the lawsuits that Allied Telesis filed against IP Triple Communications.  Allied Telesis filed in California and from what he is saying, it looks like it is about secondary issues that Allied Telesis be may having with them and not about the failure of service on Yokota specifically.  Could this be a diversionary tactic to avoid admitting that they could not pay the bill?  We will not know until I can get my hands on some additional documents, but we are still digging away.

Turns out IP Triple Communications is a major player in the telecom world, more so than Allied Telesis.  Our research turned up that they are one of the leading solution designers for networks both military and civilian and were employed by Allied Telesis to help get things going on Yokota.  Apparently they have a rather large footprint here in Japan with several telecom industries, are currently working with a couple of military installations stateside for various kinds of services, and provide services all the way down in the Philippines.  My guess would be the reported business failure may have been on the Allied Telesis side and not IP Triple Communications. 

IP Triple Communications also worked with SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation), to install the newer infrastructure for Allied Telesis to operate on.  While the Stars and Stripes reported that IP Triple Communications claimed that Allied Telesis owed them over $200K in unpaid phone bills, the rumor mill, which has been pretty accurate as of lately, has been picking up whispers that SAIC has an even bigger chunk of unpaid change owed to them by Allied Telesis, and I am using the word “change” very loosely (think in terms of at lease a big M as in million).  We also caught wind that NTT, our very own backbone provider for everything Allied Telesis provides us, had a beef with Allied Telesis too over similar issues earlier this year, though not likely for similar amounts.  Admittedly these are just rumors, but as my father has always said, “Where there is smoke, usually there is fire!” and I am hoping that the residents do not get burned for it.

We submitted the petition to AAFES today via e-mail.  The date is slightly off because I originally thought that my husband was going to drop it into the mail later this week only to realize that I had better do it myself via the fastest method possible.  I just forgot to change the date before I sent it.  Hopefully, the petition will push AAFES to take action.

Thank you to all the signers who decided to speak up and post their thoughts on the petition.  Please know that AAFES received the full version, while the version you see posted here was modified for the extended audience to include Stars and Stripes, Allied Telesis Inc, and the 374 AW/PA.

We’ll keep you posted to any reactions.

Due to recent allegations posted to this site regarding the payment to dependant spouses by Allied Telesis for services rendered, contract or otherwise, we are submitting a new request for information to AAFES.  Hopefully this one will come to us fairly quickly unlike the original request to which we are still waiting on information from.

HQ AAFES
Attn: GC (FOIA) Ms. Robin L. Woodard
P.O. Box 650060
Dallas, TX 75265-0060

October 25, 2008

Re: New Freedom of Information Act Request Contract# 01-001-06-45 Documents (January 1 2008 – Present)

To Whom It May Concern:

This is a new request under the Freedom of Information Act.

I request that a copy of the following documents [or documents containing the following information] be provided to me:

1. Data regarding the number of dependant employees, contract or otherwise, employed by Allied Telesis from September 2, 2006 until present.

2. Data regarding the number of dependant employees, contract or otherwise, employed by Allied Telesis from September 2, 2006 until present correlated the number of paychecks distributed for the same group broken across each month for services rendered.

3. Data regarding the separated median salaries paid to positions held by dependant employees, contract or otherwise, employed by Allied Telesis from September 2, 2006 until present. Please break out by position and provided detailed description of role/responsibilities.

4. Data regarding any outstanding claims (current or settled) by dependant employees, contract or otherwise, employed by Allied Telesis from September 2, 2006 until present.

5. Copy of actions taken by the Contracting Officer or other AAFES officials due to the business failure associated with disrupted phone services during September ~ October of 2008.

6. Data regarding dates/times of E911 updates provided to Yokota Air Base and its entities such as SFS and FD.

*The term AAFES is being used generically to encompass all of the Army Air Force Exchange Service, its subsidiaries, and other AAFES controlled entities such as Resilian Communications, Robin Hood, etc.

**The term DATA includes all information aside from personal information such as SSN, Name, Address, etc.

In order to help to determine my status to assess fees, you should know that I am an individual seeking information for personal use and not for a commercial use.

I respectfully request that all fees, including copying and applied man hours be waived due to the nature of the requested materials “is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of AAFES and is not in the commercial interest of the requester.”  Should these materials not be available free of charge, I am willing to pay up to $200, but request that all documents be made available digitally as determined by the Paperwork Reduction Act (44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.).  Should the costs exceed my estimate, then please inform me as to what the costs will be along with how to provide payment. 

To help reduce search times for the above documents, most of the documents should already be present within the contracting officer’s contract folder(s) for Contract #01-001-06-45.  Should the requested documents not be within said folder(s), a full review of the contract should be conducted to ensure that it meets the Department of Defense guidelines for proper documenting of contractor’s performance, acceptance of deliverables, etc for DoD owned/managed contracts.

Please remember that in accordance with the statute for FOIA requests, there are only 20 work days available to respond upon receipt for a FOIA.  An additional 10 work days may be taken in certain circumstances, but the requester (me) must be notified in writing that an extension is being taken, the reason(s) for taking the extension, and the anticipated date of the FOIA response.

Thank you for your consideration of this request.