Allied Telesis @ Yokota Rocks/Sucks

Rumors are flying that AAFES’s Resilian Communications is slowly being dismantled.  Resilian is being disposed of after a AAFES invested in a consulting contact to report on how to best go about their telecommunication efforts.  Shortly after the results from the $1,000,000+ contract came back, AAFES hired an actual true blooded veteran of the telecommunications industry instead of relying on daughters’ of folks who have or had some clout within the AAFES community at one time.  Yes, AAFES hires upper management based upon what favors it can engender.  I am sure there is someone who would argue that point or someone got hurt feelings from me revealing that tidbit, but it is what it is.  However, in this case, it really bit AAFES in the butt because, let’s be frank here, none of the telecommunications roll outs has gone smoothly. 

Not a single installation, not a single company, & pretty much across the board there is broad unhappiness among customers.  At first, Osan was the test case.  AAFES hired a contractor who ran fiber optic lines across the installations…above ground…ran into severe problems after deployment with bandwidth, problems with folks in dorms having to pay long distance to call DSN phones on base, bandwidth issues, equipment issues, prices, and my personal favorite contract rigging.  Then came other installations where problems continued to mount and now…now AAFES has in its infinite wisdom decided to spend big bucks to have someone else tell them it wasn’t working.  Big shocker…could have just asked people directly and I am not talking about someone who is going for a promotion that is contingent to political motivations.

As Resilian is perhaps shutting down, the current head of Resilian is expanding his job prospects through his new consulting firm of MTW & Associates, Inc.  Hopefully there is no potential contract opportunities coming to MTW that involve the telecom world and AAFES.  I would hate to see any of my MWR funds going to folks who already profited from it and even drove the knife deeper by allowing contractors to run amok instead of enforcing contracts, pricing limitations, etc.

Can not say I am sad to see it go, but after its explosive debut, it is better that it may be more of a whimper than another bang.  Would hate to see the customers have to take the hit again considering “the best customers in the world” seem to keep getting nailed for AAFES related failures and greed.

Will things improve without Resilian Communications at the helm?

• Definetly Not (38%, 27 Votes)
• No (25%, 18 Votes)
• How much more is this going to cost me? (19%, 14 Votes)
• Yes (18%, 13 Votes)

Total Voters: 72

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As Allied Telesis Yokota has turned up the heat for folks downloading content via P2P (peer to peer) applications with its most recent advertising campaign, Yokota still yearns to access content via its paid internet subscriptions through Allied Telesis.  I would wager a small sum that all the recent download concerns stems from Allied Telesis’s concern that there is too much bandwidth being consumed or that there are not nearly enough customers as anticipated interested in their movie channel offerings.  As typical, instead of correcting the underlying problem, Allied Telesis focuses attention at the customer vs. their own inadequacies.  Below are two ways how AAFES and Allied Telesis could correct their situation, though probably not in a way that would facilitate them making more profit.

• As when Allied Telesis first deployed their network at Yokota, their administrative functions all had US-based IP addresses which allowed them to conduct certain aspects of their operations easier.  Allied Telesis could very easily extend this courtesy to the residents of Yokota which would allow instant access to paid services through Xbox-Live, NetFlix, and more.  I suspect however, that this will not happen because it would increase bandwidth usage by leaps and bounds and more than likely would overwhelm the underdeveloped network that is in place now, again pointing out the inadequacies of their current deployment and that they have not completed roll-out as advertised.
• AAFES could use its considerable reach to redesignate the Allied Telesis network as an official DoD network, allowing companies who previously blocked content to open up access to Yokota Air Base customers.  However, again I suspect that this would end up costing Allied Telesis more due to the increased bandwidth use.

As the current user agreement states:

I bet that Allied Telesis is finding out that 30GB is about the average use by users a opposed to the extreme end.  With streaming video, Microsoft updates, video games, VoIP, Mozy like backup services, and more taking more and more bandwidth with each passing year, the 30GB limit that was first established by Americable Japan no longer applies it once did.  Now I would like to keep in mind that Allied Telesis has never come down on anyone who exceeded that amount by our knowledge, but the fact that the limit exists still is a cause of concern.  Back in the states, limits of 60GB to 120GB of “download” bandwidth are considered about normal.  Hell, if customers are complaining about Sprints cell phone “unlimited” data packet plan that has a 5GB limit as being too restrictive and that is a phone, one can only imagine what kind of bandwidth would a house with 2 or 3 computers would be pulling.

Regardless of what the true motivations are of Allied Telesis Yokota for suddenly hyper focusing on P2P applications, one thing remains constant.  It is 100% illegal to download pirated data.  Customers who use these types of applications should educate themselves with the risks they are taking and realize that there are serious consequences to be paid either in cash, career, or skin and in some cases all three if the offense is serious enough.

In the mean time, you can read about the Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act which provides information as to how your ISP can interact with you when they are notified by the lawyers of a copyright holder requesting an immediate cease and desist.  While I do not hold much on Wikipedia as gospel, these entries are fairly accurate as to how the proceedings occur.

For P2P users who choose to accept the risks associated, check out our new page called What’s On Tonight for your popular syndicated show fix.

**Message From Our Lawyer:  Allied Telesis Yokota Rocks/Sucks.org does not condone the use of P2P applications to acquire pirated materials.  We strongly discourage our readers from acquiring pirated materials and to purchase them via any online shopping venue.**

I know that I have written a bit about Yokota not having HD service, but being sold mostly HD televisions which seems ironic to say the least.  There are still lingering questions though as to why our paid for television services are not being streamed to our homes in a digital format as called for within the contract Performance Work Statement and within the proposal submitted by Allied Telesis when bidding on the contract.  Ironically, at one point we did have digital services on base, however, Allied Telesis had numerous bandwidth issues with delivery that outweighed their ability to provide the service to the homes.  For example, East and West sides of Yokota have areas where the maximum to home bandwidth is in the ballpark of 12Mpbs.  At those rates, a customer who is paying for the 10Mb package would lose 4+Mbps in paid bandwidth if they were to run more than one television via the Allied Telesis IPTV solution at the same time.  Understandably, this was not an acceptable solution as it forced Allied Telesis to pay for and schedule needed infrastructure upgrades to match their proposed to home optimum speed.  This was of course something identified within their proposal, but never completed due to lack of funds. 

Sadly, Allied Telesis continues to charge customers at digital HD rates while only providing analog services on a infrastructure that has not seen too significant of an upgrade in terms of video delivery.  I would probably be safe betting that over 90% of the recently downgraded Americable Japan cable plant remains intact and in full operation for Yokota.  If you remember, Americable Japan provided a significantly superior picture and sound quality to the homes, even though at that time the content was recorded and more than a week old.  When Allied Telesis was going to take over, Allied Telesis attempted to purchase the modern cable plant at sub-market prices because they felt that Americable had not choice but to sell.  Americable Japan rejected their crappy offer and decided to meet the requirements of their contract and return the cable plant to the original condition as directed when they originally took it over.

Sadly, it looks like Allied Telesis will never make necessary upgrades to provide Yokota with what they are paying for.  Not surprising however as Allied Telesis still refuses to provide Triple Play Services as they describe on their own corporate site.  Seems to be a trend with Allied Telesis to not pay bills in order to continue to improve revenues and pad their bottom line.  Can not blame them really considering AAFES still refuses to recognize that Information Services should be considered a utility and exempt from their “Tax” on income before profits and liabilities are accounted for.  Perhaps the Air Force had it right from the start by letting Com Squadrons run telecommunication services for the base.  I paid less and received better service.  Granted, there were different offerings back then, but if you look at the other bases like Yokosuka, they have the same & better services for cheaper.

As we keep a pretty close watch as to who votes in our polls ever since we first started them and caught external parties salting the vote, occasionally we find something of interest as we did today.

In our most recent poll:

Have you ordered or are planning to order Allied Telesis's new channel, Showtime?

• No (57%, 51 Votes)
• Maybe (31%, 28 Votes)
• Yes (12%, 10 Votes)

Total Voters: 89

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We had an voter come in from a rather interesting location with an interesting history.

No.	User	IP/Host	Date
89	Guest	63.197.243.249 / 249-243users.fenwick.com	September 26, 2009 @ 6:56 am

Now, you must be wondering why this is even worth mentioning.  Well, just take a gander at the filling provided by Allied Telesis regarding their lawsuit against IP Triple Communications, the company who supposedly cut Yokota off without cause and without warning during the phone outage in late 2008.  There were other issues included in the filling, but most did not actually pertain to the residents of Yokota.

As the status of that case, since it has moved from the Superior Court to Federal Court and is still under arbitration versus a Jury Trial originally requested by Allied Telesis lawyers, it seems that the residents of Yokota may never really find out the actual truth of what happened when the service was cut.  It is shameful that this may never make the light of day because the good and paying residents of Yokota may have lost service due to an possibly unscrupulous AAFES contractor.

Our legal team says that in such cases, it is rare that any of the actual findings are made available to the public as the clear loser in this case will ask for the case to be sealed to prevent other possible lawsuits from leveraging this case against them.  What this really means is that AAFES will more than likely never learn the truth in such a manner that they could use it to take legal action against either company on behalf of the residents of Yokota.  Additionally, AAFES would not be able to bar said loser from any future AAFES telecommunications contracts.

As someone at Fenwick is planning to get the new Allied Telesis channel offerings, we would like to invite them to write us and describe how they are an authorized patron of AAFES services & when they will be coming to Yokota to leverage their new service.  You can reach us here at webmaster@alliedtelesissucks.org.

A few weeks ago, we received a strange contact on our website’s petition by someone claiming to be Mr. Takayoshi Oshima, the Chairman and CEO of Allied Telesis Holding K.K. and CEO of ATI Group.  Shocked, we quickly spun into action and attempted to confirm the message as a true contact to which we received no answer.  Recently we even turned to sending out a direct email the address provided asking for confirmation and making assurances that we would in no way post the information provided to us without first being able to confirm it was genuine.

At first it seems like it was too good to be true.  On September 1’st we received the following message posted to our petition:

Folks,

Here is my direct email: XXXXX@allied-telesis.co.jp

send me your problems and I will try and fix them for you.

*The listed email address was stripped to secure privacy.

Naturally we were very skeptical that this was the real deal.  I mean, honestly, after this site being up and running after all these years, we would be receiving a direct contact from the CEO of the company and not one of his subordinates.  It was a little hard to believe.

To attempt to establish confirmation, we resent the petition confirmation email several times and even sent a direct contact message hoping to elicit some sort of response other than a negative reply.

While I am naturally inclined to laugh at a good joke, folks, make it at my expense vs.. others who more than likely would want nothing to do with our site.  Mr. Oshima, I am sure has better things to do than sift through message traffic from Allied Telesis@Yokota Rocks/Sucks trying to establish a confirmation of contact. 

Over the past few weeks we have also received messages posted on our site alleging potential criminal wrong doings or Mr. Oshima.  I would like to ask the parties involved to stop posting such allegations unless there is actual proof and they are willing to provide proof on demand.  While this site may occasionally fire from the hip about a particular topic or another, we do have the moral responsibility not to soil anyone’s name in public without proof.  In the past, we have refused to print the names of employees of Allied Telesis.  We did this out of respect to the numerous family members at Yokota employed by the company as our beef is not with the employees, but the business practices and feeling of misdeeds of the company itself.

To Mr. Oshima, should you be reading this please know that if you wish to actually reach out to the customers of Yokota personally, we would be more than happy to facilitate that process either by advertising how to participate or to facilitate it ourselves as we appear to have the most capability to do so at this time.  We would like to invite you to contact us at webmaster@alliedtelesissucks.org should you wish to discuss this further.

To our faithful readers, thanks for being there and keeping us going.  Your support is very much appreciated.  Please know that without you this site would not be able to exist.