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Did Telus Drive a Small ISP Out of Business?
Here’s a report alleging that Telus drove a BC woman out of business by maniplulating regulators and courts with false information.
via BoingBoing
Her story seems legit. If so, it’s a real failure on the part of our justice system.
On the other hand, Michel, there’s not a bit of evidence in report to support any of her complaints, so “seems legit” seems, to me, to be an overstatement when applied to her story as she tells in the video clip. (I suppose that does depend on what one’s understanding of the meaning of “seems” and “legit” is).
Her so-called evidence is the assertion some expert told her she was overcharged and that she obtained something on access to information request that states that Telus provides regulated services.
I’m prepared to concede that there is at least as much evidence in that video as there is the run-of-the-mill “alien abduction” story, though not perhaps quite as much as there was in GB2’s WMT claim.
Still, there’s nothing in the video that connects the dots: as in Telus charged us $X for this service. Under some CRTC reg, the most it could lawfully charge was some lesser amount. Here is the paper (or some other form of) proof. Do you think the BoingBoing owner missed that?
In any event, according to Telus, in a reply on BoingBoing that predates your posting here (you have to scroll down a bit to get past the vox populi
If, in fact, Telus was charging more for some service than it was entitled to by a CRTC reg, you’d think at least one of those people would have have seen that, by comparing the apple and the apple. And that she’d have included that in her video.
Apart form that, this is the Telus reply, for what it is worth, posted on boingboing on May 30.
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/05/29/canadian-indie-isp-o.html
No: I do not represent Telus in case anybody wonders.
For what it is worth, at least to me, $800,000 plus is a lot of overcharges for everybody to miss that Telus was charging more than it was lawfully allowed to.
DC
Well, she claims to have proof that Telus acknowledges the services *in question* were regulated, contrary to what she claims they said in arbitration. Not that anyone should take her story at face value, of course. Nor Telus’ version.
Lots of claims but not a whit of substantiation. Anybody viewing that video should ask why. I once thought better of BoingBoing.
Disclosure–I work for an ISP, though not one that’s involved in this case.
I would just add to David’s comments, the issue on which she seems to think she has “new evidence” is that certain services were regulated. I don’t know all the facts (because she doesn’t disclose them,) but I would think that whether or not a given service is regulated is a matter of law, not of fact and expert “evidence”. And, for anyone who works in the industry, it doesn’t seem like it’s a particularly tricky matter of law, either. I find it quite difficult to believe that her “expert” discovered an answer to a question of law that should override the judgments of the legal bodies to whom that very question was presented.