FutureShop.ca couldn’t handle the volume

December 25, 2006
Future Shop not availableAlthough Mark Evans and Rob Hyndman both wrote recent posts about the eMarketer’s recent report about the slumbering state of e-commerce in Canada, at least one Canadian website couldn’t cope with demand.

Future Shop’s website was overwhelmed on Christmas Eve with people trying to get early access to its Boxing Day prices.

The sale was advertised to begin at 8:00pm on December 24, but users received a message for at least the first two hours saying:

The request cannot be processed at this time. The amount of traffic exceeds the Web site’s configured capacity.

Even after the website came up, the “buy now” button showed signs of being overwhelmed as well. It just didn’t pay to try to beat the rush to buy disk drives, a colour laser printer or expensive SD cards for the new cameras.

What was it? Unexpected demand, poor infrastructure planning, simply not being ready on time or the misfortune of a server outage taking place on one of the toughest nights to get people to work?

It doesn’t matter what happened. These kinds of problems reflect poorly on more than just Future Shop. When a major retailer fails to provide even adequate service levels (let alone a superior shopping experience), it can discourage users from even trying other sites.

I’ll send my son to the store when it opens at 6:00am on Tuesday. That’s what kids with driver’s licenses are for, isn’t it?

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Taking it a little easier though the holidays

December 23, 2006
Alec Saunders noted that traffic was down on his site as of Wednesday.

My site’s traffic waited until Friday to tail off. My readers must have tougher bosses that Alec’s!

With the kids home from school, and many readers away from their desks, I’m going to take a bit of a break from my daily posts.

After all, even the CRTC is done releasing decisions until the new year.

I’ll keep regular postings to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule until after January 1.

CRTC tells users “don’t call us”

January 25, 2017

The CRTC’s procedural rules include a provision (Section 44(1)) that allows the Commission to award costs to an intervenor who has an interest in the outcome of a proceeding, has participated in a responsible way and has contributed to a better understanding of the issues.

This rule is designed to assist the participation of intervenors that

will receive a benefit or suffer a detriment as a result of the order or decision resulting from the proceeding

While section 56 of the Telecom Act gives the CRTC wide discretion to “order by whom and to whom any costs are to be paid”, the Rules of Procedure seem pretty clear that “costs [are] to be paid by the regulated company”, not other classes of public interveners.

That is why it was somewhat surprising that the CRTC’s final orders of the year threw a lump of coal into the stockings of the Canadian Marketing Association, ordering the CMA to pay for the participation of a variety of consumer groups in the Do Not Call List proceeding.

One might have thought that CMA should have been eligible to receive a cost award – meeting all of the criteria set out in the rules. The CRTC didn’t care that CMA itself is a non-profit organization that represents a class of users. Instead, the CRTC noted that the CMA previously was charged costs in a 2002 proceeding.

While the CRTC claims to have broad discretion under the Telecom Act, by exceeding the bounds of its Rules of Procedure it sends a bad message to groups and individuals that seek to contribute “to a better understanding of the issues by the Commission”.

The message is that the CRTC can arbitrarily award costs to punish a class of users or participants in a hearing. Not only do users have to be willing to risk absorbing their own costs of appearing, but the CRTC could charge them for others to have appeared as well.

This sort of discretion should be taken away when the Minister opens up the Telecom Act for reform. The Commission has demonstrated poor judgement in discouraging the public from participating in its proceedings.

Telecom at the CRTC

January 25, 2017

In a forborne environment, what is the role of the CRTC in telecom?

That is a question some are asking in the wake of the December 11 announcement by the Minister to propose a variance in the rules for local telecom service forbearance.

We have already seen that there will be a few challenges operationalizing the intent of the variance. As I wrote last Thursday, it is not yet clear what the criteria will be for business services. For the next few years, the CRTC will assess applications against these factors.

We suspect that the proceeding to assess wholesale essential services, launched in November, will be even more important in a forborne environment, in order to ensure sustainable competition. As described earlier in the week, the recognition of the importance of the wholesale regime found its way into the modifications made in the final version of the Minister’s policy direction this past Monday. Yesterday, the issue of billing and collection rates is an example of the types of concerns some industry players will have in the determination of which elements are in fact essential.

Access to essential facilities, at a fair price, even in an environment with facilities-based competitors, will ensure that resellers and new entrants can continue to discipline the marketplace, maintaining incentives for innovation and price competition for consumers. It remains the responsibility of the CRTC to regulate the wholesale access regime.

Beating Skype for overseas long distance

December 21, 2006
TELUS just published a fact sheet about Christmas calling trivia. This coming long weekend will be one of the businest calling times of the year, so let me chime in with thoughts on how to help your calls get through and save money at the same time.

It seems that everyone likes to think that we have seen the end of long distance pricing. With Skype offering all you can eat plans for $15 a year and other providers bundling LD with local service for $30 or less per month, who thinks of LD costs? In the US, the whole country is part of most wireless plans local calling areas.

It is easy for many of us to forget that a lot of folks still have to worry about calling to the rest of the world. Calling to the places that aren’t part of your flat rate plan. And we have to consider that PC to PC-based networks aren’t for everyone, especially if we’re talking about calling places that aren’t well equipped for broadband.

In any case, did you know that Skype-out isn’t anywhere close to offering the best rates for many locations? For example, having had a kid studying overseas, I learned that the price offered by Telehop (10-10-100) for calls to Israel are less than a third of Skype’s rates – 5 cents Canadian on Telehop versus 15 cents US on Skype. For the Philippines, Telehop charges 15 cents (CDN) versus 22 cents (US) for Skype.

Other dial-around companies offer similar savings. And since dial-around companies place the charges on your local phone bill, they do not require payment by credit card. As such, those individuals that need to save the most, the people who can’t qualify for credit cards, have better alternatives than making calls through a computer. As an added benefit, most dial-around companies have no monthly system access fees.

Yak (10-10-925) has been fighting a regulatory battle to keep these low cost options intact for consumers. Yak claims that the phone companies are making too much money for their billing and collection services – a fundamental enabler of this competitive alternative. The ILECs have tried to delay the proceding, perhaps because they want to keep the competitors’ costs as high as possible for as long as they can.

To all who are making calls this weekend – call early, call often and try out a number of different carriers, if your calls aren’t getting through. Just dial the access code before the long distance number in one steady string [eg. 10-10-100 – 1 + … or 10-10-100 – 011 + …].

Who knows, you just might save a few dollars on top. Take the money you save and buy a coffee for someone cold on the streets this winter.

Happy holidays.

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