Allied Telesis @ Yokota Rocks/Sucks

Rumor has it that Allied Telesis Yokota’s big boss Keith Suthard is in in town to look over what they have been doing.  Hoping that he is here to try to get the contract back into 100% compliance in all areas like IVVD (Integrated Voice Video Data), digital television, etc.  Seems like the least they could do after AAFES bought the time shifting servers (about $250K) using probably a portion of our “MWR dividend” to do it.

Hopefully it is a productive trip that will benefit the Yokota community.

Over the past few months, Allied Telesis Yokota has been the recipient of some much needed prodding by us and others, but let’s take a quick look at very different perspective that is out there.  It has been mentioned to me and my spouse on several occasions that Yokota Air Base has it better than nearly all other bases in terms of internet, TV, and phone services.  While that is definitely the case for many of the assignments my spouse has been on, it is our firm belief that it does not alleviate the issues that are present here.

First and foremost, we reviewed all of the offerings that are currently provided at other Air Force installations around the world.  In terms of overseas bases, we are definitely in the top 10 of most “Stateside Like” for overseas Air Force bases, though I fear that with the Navy/Marines taking a serious look at quality of life issues that they may actually be fielding better packages than us over the next year to two years.  Those projects are still on the board though and may even get tied up in the courts because of some spats between equipment manufactures and former business partners such as the case between IP Triple and Allied Telesis.

It is also important to point out that of all the companies we have dealt within the past, Allied Telesis customer service and tech support departments are probably ranked in the top 5 for us.  I know there are others out there who have had less than sterling moments while dealing with those departments, we have been fortunate.  Of course, the service itself leaves something to be desired at moments on both TV and phone, but at least you can get a hold of their customer service department vs. the difficulties we had with Softbank.  My spouse can tell you first hand that it wasn’t fun as he would spend hours calling and eventually writing the AAFES contract manager trying to get his bandwidth back from oblivion.

The only reason this site even exists is because Allied Telesis and AAFES are knowingly not meeting the promises made to the residents of Yokota both prior and after the contract arrived.  Not only were promises made and not kept, but we have serious concerns regarding the status of deliverables outlined within the contract.  Of course, we would like to be more aware of what is in that contract, but our efforts to see all the documentation have been stymied for quite some time now.  We did submit a complaint in that regard and we are still waiting to see the corrections as determined by the findings.  Sadly, we may have to make more complaints as subsequent requests for information have been left unanswered as well.

Promises and contracted deliverables are the cornerstone of keeping and expanding any customer base of any company.  As many of those items are either being ignored or even explained away by a very strong public relations effort on AAFES behalf, it is easy to see why as the customers of Yokota are a captive audience with little to no choice but to accept what is provided and ignore the problems as there is only one provider available because of AAFES choice to attempt to assert its right to primacy, though I still believe that there is little doubt that its primacy could be stripped if anyone actually had the money to attempt to bring it to court.

Understandably, brining a new service, especially one as costly as an IT based service to a base would cost a considerable amount of money.  We know it ourselves as my spouse has been in and out of the IT world since before we met, since the days of 4800Kbps modems and using UNIX based GUI-less systems to view the Internet.  When we got married, we proceeded to make a heavy investment in IT where my family lives in the Philippines.  Our investment, pre-dating the signing of the Allied Telesis contract, made us more than aware of what the roll out costs for a city/installation that had little to know supporting infrastructure.  Granted, our labor rates are considerably lower than what Allied had to pay its partners and employees, but materials, equipment, and support costs are nearly the same if not higher for us in some regards.  We tried to bring this to the attention of the command at the time, but the PR campaign was stacked against any doubters and thus left everyone to sit back and watch what had been foretold in our letter slowly appear.

More than anything, my spouse would love to see this site shut down as he has some concerns regarding its existence and the possible long term affect on the career.  I made a promise to him that we would shut down the site the moment AAFES or Allied Telesis came out and cleared the air.  I am not talking about another PR type event, but rather a frank and open dialogue discussing how areas of the contract are either going to come into compliance on approximate X date how they will be dropping certain aspects of the contract and look for other alternatives.  As they have been less than open with a federally mandated program, Freedom Of Information Act, I doubt that they will be open or even apologetic to the community for continuing to profit/tax us on a product that has failed to make good on its promise.  Of course, that opens up a whole other can of worms which I am not wanting to even dive into and will leave that to someone else to pursue.

Thanks for reading as always.  I know that our point of view at times are bit far reaching, but it is our opinion as stated by the site disclaimer and any/all research we may come up with we will always provide to you to form your own opinion.  As my spouse always loves to say, “Opinions are like a$$ holes.  Everyone’s got one.”  In our case, that is definitely the truth. 

If you have a difference of opinion and would like to post it here, please sign up for an account and shoot us an e-mail message indicating your desire.  We have no problem posting differences of opinion or personal stories so long as we get the chance to review it for relevance and of course to ensure that it isn’t derogatory too much.  We have of course aired our laundry on a few occasions, but we still need to check for content, after all we don’t want to see the site shut down due to a legal dispute or even command intervention.  Even if you are an Allied Telesis employee, we’ll be more than happy to have your post here as well, though we would kindly ask you drop the PR department at the login screen as we are looking for the truth in the advertising.

Allied Telesis Yokota tech support promises that the channel guide and TiVO fix is coming soon.  Understandably this has probably been a large undertaking considering that time shifting isn’t something that occurs in the states regularly.  We were informed that the fix would be in sometime this week hopefully.

I need to give TiVO customer service a call and see if they can credit my account for a service that is not useable.  They’ll probably put the blame onto our cable providers back which will undoubtedly result in no refunds.

Wonder when Americable Japan is going to go live with their upcoming enhancements.  Rumor has it that it will be happening before the end of the year.  Best the residents of the Navy bases are looking forward to the upgrades, as Yokota’s residents were for time shifting.  Reportedly, Americable Japan is going digital and will have time shifted content from the states.  This upgrade would definitely put them ahead of what Allied Telesis has been able to bring to Yokota Air Base to date.

For any customer of Allied Telesis Yokota who has TiVO or pulls the schedule from the internet for your Media Center PC type system, you are going to have a jacked up schedule for about a week according to AT tech support.  I was glad that they let us know that they were working on the problem, but it is sad that AAFES, as they were the purchaser and provider of the time-shifting servers wouldn’t have thought about that before.  After all, they were the ones who sold the TiVO’s at the BX as stop gap hoping that people would by them vs. having to install time shifters.  Granted, there is nothing that says that directly, but if I was having to purchase tech for a contractor having difficulties, I would look for the cheapest way to get what customers want accomplished and still make money.

Sign Our Petition. Request competitive services for Yokota!

On a side note, TiVO launched its NetFlix service today, for applicable units.  Remember, cutting your cable service and moving over to NetFlix can save you a significant amount of money over the year.

After Allied Telesis Yokota made a mockery of our attempt to offer an olive branch and let them get their perspective out to our readers, we approached Americable Japan to see if they would talk with us.  After having barely sent out the e-mail request to a general Americable Japan account Mr. James H. Smith, the President and CEO of Americable International Inc., responded to us and agreed to by interviewed by us.  From that experience alone with Allied Telesis Yokota and Americable, it was completely night and day considering we are not even a customer of Americable and they were openly talking with us and taking time out of their busy schedules to essentially reach out to our readers.  It was a refreshing moment to be able to ask a question get an actual answer.

ATSucks — Thank you, Mr. Smith, for taking the time to sit down with us and talk about ISP related services, Yokota Air Base, and your impressions of the Allied Telesis question. We know your time is precious so we will keep our quick Q&A as short as possible so that you can get back to taking care of our Navy brethren in Japan. Since your company, Americable Japan, left Yokota Air Base in late 2006, there have been significant problems with our new provider. In a recent Stars and Stripes article, it was suggested that stability of the telecom services provided continue to be a problem. From your own experiences with bringing a new telecom/broadband service to a foreign based US Military installation, can you give us some insight as to what are some of the potential problems with trying to start a new service on an installation such as Yokota.

Mr. Smith — Americable had some well documented problems with its initial Internet service primarily due to underestimating the demand for bandwidth.

Americable has not implemented full service for telephone. We offer Domatic VOIP which is similar to Vonage except that we have local support for hardware and service. We have identified partners in the industry that we will work with for implementation of phone service if the opportunity arises. It is essential that 911 emergency services function properly under all conditions and that the phone switch interfaces to the DSN switch according to JITC specifications.

ATSucks — How was Americable Japan able to overcome these problems and improve quality of service to its customers?

Mr. Smith — We have worked closely with our bandwidth provider, NTT, to stay ahead of the curve and have increased our pipe size by a factor of 10 since our initial start up. We have invested heavily in state of the art Motorola CMTS (cable modem termination service) equipment and run a 24×7 help line to assure good customer speeds and service. Generally significant improvements in quality are the result of major capital expenditures.

ATSucks — Within what kind of timeline could we normally expect these kind of improvements to be made?

Mr. Smith — Bandwidth upgrades take 3 months so you need to plan ahead BEFORE you have a problem. That was our biggest mistake 5 years ago when we brought up Internet. You have to have a board and owner that are committed to delivering quality service and willing to spend the money it takes to make it happen. Historically cable companies usually request long term franchise agreements so that there is time to recoup the initial cost and generate a reasonable return on investment. Americable just negotiated a 10 year extension on our franchise with the Navy and we are making a major investment in new technology to eliminate DVDs and dramatically improve picture quality. We feel that we have developed an underlying infrastructure that we can build on for the next 10 years.

ATSucks — Why do you feel that internet on US Military Installations cost more than what is available right outside the gates?

Mr. Smith — Remember that the bandwidth providers know that 95% of the traffic coming from our bases is going trans-Pacific so they charge a higher premium than they would if they felt the bulk of our traffic was going to stay in Japan.

ATSucks — I see that for nearly $75 a month, I can get 15Mbps from your service. Care to venture a guess as to why Allied Telesis is charging Yokota customers the same for 10Mbps?

Mr. Smith — Maybe they haven’t negotiated bandwidth costs as aggressively as we did. Obviously AAFES is taking money off the top so that is probably being passed on directly to the customer.

ATSucks — Allied Telesis has been using your channel lineup as a comparison to their own services/prices. Would you care to comment on their interpretation of the facts?

Mr. Smith — Number of channels and quality of programming are two different things. Stay tuned for our new lineup coming soon.

ATSucks — As Allied Telesis does not enjoy exclusive access to Yokota Air Base, has Americable made overtures to either AAFES or the Installation’s Commmander(s) to attempt to come back?

Mr. Smith — We offered to stay for another year during transition as Allied clearly wasn’t ready to deliver services at the end of our franchise. That was not accepted by either Base Command or AAFES. Allied felt our infrastructure was not needed long term so we could not come to terms with them on an acceptable price. Ironic that they are now using that infrastructure 2 years later after failing to make IPTV work as promised. The big loser was the base personnel. We have since approached base command at Yokota several times to offer competing services.

ATSucks — What was the response you received?

Mr. Smith — No response to date.

ATSucks — Have you attempted to become an AAFES vendor to directly compete with Allied Telesis?

Mr. Smith – AAFES has not offered that as an option for Yokota. We are responding to RFPs for Zama and Misawa but have no formal agreements in place. Our primary concern is the service that we can deliver to the men and women in uniform and their families. If AAFES can add value to the process we are happy to work with them.

ATSucks — Are you saying that the AAFES banner does not add any true value for the customers on an installation?

Mr. Smith — Not at all, but the primary concern should be competitive offerings to the end users.

ATSucks — Where do you see Americable Japan serivces changing over the next year?

Mr. Smith — Soon we will introduce the first digital system for the military installations in Japan. We have invested heavily in a flexible infrastructure that allows us to control set top boxes from Yokosuka thus dramatically simplifying the addition of additional bases. We will be streaming over 50 channels from the States with many channels not seen to date on bases in the Pacific region. Stay tuned!

ATSucks — Is that going to affect your pricing much or are things going to remain stable for the most part?

Mr. Smith — Our basic digital tier will be $52.95 with more channels than our current Tier2 at $52.95. Internet pricing remains the same – 2-5Mbps $38.95, 10-12Mbs $59.75 and 15-20Mbps $74.95.

ATSucks — Sure wish that I was at an installation with the option of having Americable Japan’s services again. Mr. Smith, thank you for your time and my best wishes to you and your company over the next year. Thank for your taking time out of your busy schedule to enlighten about the perils of running an ISP in Japan on a US Military installation.

What a shame we can’t get some competitive services on Yokota.  It was great when Softbank and Americable Japan were competing for business at Yokota.  Customers received the best services then, but as soon as Americable had to leave, service and reasonable prices flew out the window leaving Yokota’s customers wanting.

Sign Our Petition. Request competitive services for Yokota!

Mr. Smith was kind enough to provide us with a small sampling of their coming upgrades  along with an idea of what they will be providing digitally to homes.  Remember, this was stipulated in Allied Telesis contract with Yokota, but we have not seen it to date since their IPTV failure.