CCATS Community Forum

Welcome to CCATS Forum

admin — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 06:13:17 +0000

We now have successfully migrated our forum from a previous application to WordPress. This forum will be online indefinitely. Please feel free to add or comment on new or existing issues. Thanks everyone for all the support and patience.

CCATS

PS: Due to overwhelming issues with “spam” we have temporarily disabled “feedbacks” – we truly appreciate all your comments that have come our way and we have noted each and every one of them. Thank you!

Terms of Use

admin — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Read this first!

This community forum is partly comprised of contributions of the general public and thus some views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of CCATS.

When posting a new thread or replying to an existing post please ensure that you base your arguments on facts and refrain from any derogatory statements. We reserve the right to deny or remove any posts that contain obscenity, derogatory or defamatory statements from this forum without notice.

To add a new entry you will need to contact us in order to become a registered user. Adding responses or comments to existing posts is open to public.

Please make good use of this platform and exercise your democratic rights.

CCATS Administrator(s)

An Open Letter to the Telecommunications Regulator of Samoa Regarding GPRS Data Rates

admin — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 09:50:23 +0000

See published letter here

Comments from the broad public encouraged – just follow the link “Comment” below!

http://ccatsamoa.info/articles/LetterToRegulator29Oct07.asp

Looking ahead and beyond…

admin — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 21:00:41 +0000

Aside from some clandestine practices of some providers to forgo imposed responsibilities within a regulatory framework sometimes there are more insidious issues pre-eminently present – but often easily overlooked.
For example one overarching concern is the conflict of interest inherent in an incumbent monopoly provider of basic telephony services moving into competing on (more profitable) mobile services. With no corresponding competitive pressure on the basic telephony side of the business, there is a strong incentive for the incumbent to shift its emphasis to the competitive (mobile) side – which it can do very effectively by cross-subsidising its own mobile service from its basic telephony service (and thus discouraging new entrants and attempting to drive the competitor out of business). This leaves much of the population with a choice of two or more mobile service providers, but essentially without an option for obtaining a basic telephone service. Some of the following posts touch upon some of these issues in order to provide basic public awareness, but ultimately it is the responsibility of an effective regulator to look at, into, and see beyond each and every concern in order to be able to make a judgment call from the totality of issues at hand.

SamoaTel’s bemusing new GoSurf Data Plans

admin — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 10:57:17 +0000

See article here

Comments from the broad public encouraged – just follow the link “Comment” below!

http://ccatsamoa.info/articles/SO11Oct07.asp

Fishing in Muddy Waters

admin — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 09:07:29 +0000

The Telecommunications Act of 2005 is an impressively weighty document which in some detail sets a basic structure for the telecommunications regulatory framework in Samoa. Despite its complexity the Act obviously cannot spell out or predict every scenario that may arise from time to time in the course of operation of a telecommunications provider that may be counter to the objectives of the Act. And so it is incumbent on the Regulator to actively seek out, detect, and expediently remedy any irregularities that directly or in a context undermine the objectives of the Act. While some issues are more complex and require extensive investigation and independent research by the Regulator, others are subtle requiring a knack (and willingness) for investigation. There are also issues that are simple and obvious (under one’s nose so to speak) but often overlooked or discarded as insignificant. And yet these seemingly simple irregularities are those that can be misused by a provider with a great negative impact for the end-user. At this point we limit ourselves to only a few actual scenarios due to sheer number of them.

The most prominent of all these types of seemingly simple issues relates to rates– that is the manner they are made public, how they list and breakdown details and most importantly a reference to when they go in effect and how and when they are superseded by new rates. The best example of such abuse is the case with mobile call rates of the past few years when TSC was the only mobile provider – if you recall at some point the mobile call rates (landline to mobile) were published as 27 sene per minute but somewhere along the line they jumped to 30 sene per minute without any formal announcement up until, as per a short and informal newspaper notice, the rates were “lowered” back to 27 sene “as an early Christmas present” – by the way, CCATS is still waiting for an explanation from SamoaTel and in the lack thereof expecting a refund to all affected customers for all the years of wrong billing! But also more recently, there have been various informal rate announcements e.g. for GoSurf and ADSL (both until recently illegally charged for anyway), but most importantly the GoMobile Prepaid rates which had gone through multiple iterations, with the previous version, as distributed even via the Regulator’s office for months, stating the mysterious Off-Peak plan for Prepaid GoMobile!

Did you get my email?

admin — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 16:50:03 +0000

Have you noticed that some email you send from a SamoaTel’s internet connection are bounced back (rejected) by the receiving mail server or just get lost? The reason for that is that SamoaTel’s host (or DNS) is not adequately configured. Any DNS look up of SamoaTel’s server gets stuck in a loop (for a thorough analysis and a more technical explanation just contact us). A combination of a misconfigured server (wrong or missing PTR, SPF, SOA DNS records – RFC1912, RFC1912, etc.) causes an email to be rejected by some established servers (AOL, Comcast, Cox, Hotmail, Gmail, etc.) or considered as “Spam”! In addition, using an SMTP that does not match the pop server or the underlying email MX record (as is the case with the strange concessions made recently and triumphantly touted by the Regulator, to allow email originated from select ISP’s to be sent and received while on a SamoaTel connection) can cause such server rejects – not to mention the fact that this also opens a security hole and involves other regulatory issues – details withheld at this level.

Can’t afford your VM

admin — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 22:06:42 +0000

GoMobile and Digicel phones are by default set with voicemail enabled – phone off – party not answering (or out of range?) will always trigger voicemail and so it incurs a (often unnecessary and unwanted) charge for the calling party. While Digicel has provisions for its users to enable and disable VM via a code (our initial tests were unsuccessful) it is not possible for GoMobile users to turn off the voicemail by using GoVM menu* (135) – calling customer service (121) yields nothing but a suggestion to visit live customer service who often find out on the job that VM service is a system module and cannot be turned off/on via the handset menu. So, it takes some convincing (and overcoming initial resistance) for the, albeit friendly customer service staff to have “someone at the switch” to turn it off per customer request – if that person feels like it that is (so far it has not yet happened it doesn’t seem it ever will!) So all in all, disabling voicemail on GoMobile is not an easy task – if not impossible per user request. Do we dare to ask why it is laid out this way? How much money people waste (and the provider gains!) for reaching a VM prompt (without even leaving a message)? Sadly, most people don’t even know they are being charged for it? Well, this is yet another serious regulatory issue that, for obvious reasons, cannot wait for weeks or months to be resolved

Note: deleting the default greeting or choosing the option announce only may seem to disable VM but it doesn’t – there still will be a connection charge to the calling party!

My very own emergency

admin — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 04:15:52 +0000

Every time the issue of emergency concern is raised in conjunction with the lack of adequate landline infrastructure or unreliable HomeZone service in rural areas we hear in response (even from top level) that the extensive mobile network is there to the rescue and where there is no satisfactory mobile coverage or no prepaid credit there is always the free call to emergency numbers available from any mobile handset. It sounds good, doesn’t it? The fact of the matter is that the emergency call is not always available is some areas – the technology works only where there is any detectable signal from any of the mobile providers and this is not always the case. It also presupposes that one wants and can afford mobile as a way of communication for routine use – which is again not always the case. But the most compelling argument against “pushing” the more profitable mobile instead providing landline to communities in rural areas is the fact that not all our emergencies are a matter of life and death requiring the fire brigade, the ambulance or the police. Let us define our own emergencies and be able to call upon whatever is necessary to resolve it – we would not necessarily call the police if our son or daughter is late coming home from school or get an ambulance to refill a prescription or order a fire engine if we ought to get to the airport and the car doesn’t start! Having a landline service is not only a major convenience but also often provides peace of mind.

Addicted to Prepaid

admin — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 05:00:24 +0000

Is it only us noticing this or is it really a new trend in place by SamoaTel? All marketing campaigns and most of the recent financial and personnel resources are now geared towards further promoting the already dominating prepaid products: in the recent times there has been Malo Card, and HomeZone and now GoSurf, and of course the highly profitable prepaid GoMobile (postpaid not promoted at all) which now is taking up 100% of all media advertising! And why not – from the point of view of a provider prepaid products are heaven-sent: getting the money in advance, no collection, no billing transparency (and so hardly any billing disputes). But from the regulatory point of view if there is a possibility of postpaid service for a product it should be offered at the same time, not only as a matter of convenience for some customers (remember prepaid is often more expensive and also it runs out) but in certain situations for productivity (running a business) and emergency reasons.