Explorenet in Canada user Agreement Q's

Hi all,

We recently moved rural and are nowhere near any HS service and so i am exploring satellite internet as an option..  Based on research i have done here and elsewhere, it looks like Explorenet is the new kid on the block wrt to satellit internet in Eastern Canada.....

I have placed a call to the local distributor (Who is to call me back today), however as i was going over the user agreement, i came across a few things that perhaps someone could shed some light on for me.....

1:"We have established a Fair Access
Policy to ensure equitable access for all Xplornet Satellite
subscribers. This policy establishes a balance in Internet
access across high-speed Internet services for all
Xplornet Satellite customers regardless of their frequency
or traffic usage. To ensure this equity, customers may
experience some temporary throughput limitations."

- Does anyone know what their FAP is exactly?  What is the threshold set at?  I read elsewhere in this forum that at this time, they do not have one set since they are so new...  Is this correct?
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2:"You authorize us to make inquiries and to
receive information about your credit experience from
others, to enter this information in your file and to disclose
information about you to third parties. You acknowledge
that we may provide credit experience information
regarding your account to others seeking this information."

- Does this not seem a tad open ended to you?  By signing, you are basically giving them the right to give out your credit history to anyone!!!!!
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3:"We reserve the right to change the Service, the monthly fees or administrative charges at any time upon 30 days notice"   AND
"You agree that if you
terminate your subscription to the Services prior to the
expiration of the initial term, we have the right, in addition
to all other amounts due to us pursuant to these Terms of
Service, as liquidated damages and not as a penalty, to
receive from you an aggregate amount determined by
multiplying the number of full months remaining in the
noncancellable initial term, by the monthly Fees specified
on your signed Service Agreement."

- By reading this, I get the sense that they have the ability within a month to increase rates and fees that you have signed on your agreement without justification and you are unable to get out of it for the period of the agreement (In this case, either 1 or 2 years)....  Cancelling anyways due to the increase, would then put Explorenet in a position to charge  you an aggregate amount of the remaining balance of your agreement PLUS a cancellation fee of $400.00 that appears on the first page of the agreement....


Can anyone comment on these excerpts?  Is this standard fare with Sat Int providers?


Cheers,

Thanks Eric... I have made a few comments below:

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[ Completely understandable and FAP's are regular fare nowadays which i wholeheartedly agree with, HOWEVER, with Explornet, it is open..  There are no specifics, which is what makes me nervous...]

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[I agree, however as you are probably aware, privacy is a big issue nowadays and as it is written this User agreements allows them to give {sell?} our information for spamming, marketing reasons..  The content could be greatly improved if their main reason behind this text is what you are referring to.]

[quote ]
Charges:   The costs of providing these services is uncertain and it is helpful to spread the risk by getting customers to accept that prices may go up unexpectedly - particularly if the initial price is below cost to try and get the customer in the first place.  
[/quote]
[I find that to be terrible business practice and any smart business individual would see that.  If as a customer i ALSO had the ability to back out of the contract if the prices UNEXPECTEDLY went up more than what i feel is acceptable, then i am completely in agreements with their statement, however this is not offered....  Only that they can change the price and at any time, however you have to live with it because if you try and get out (While still under the agreement that is) we will monetarily penalize you so much so that it'll cost you more....  To me that is not good business, that is more in line with hooking you, tying you up and if you try and get away when we start to yank on the hook, well it's going to hurt even more because we have you tied as well....]

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[To only dream {re:wealthy}]


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Thanks again for your comments..

Cheers,
JimmiH

Wildblue's fair access policy seems screwy to me. I am in Oregon and I mainly use the internet after 11 PM Pacific Time. Between 10 and 11 PM I am mainly visiting forums and doing other "light usage" activities. Wildblue is going to be taking a lot of megabytes away from me in an attempt to solve problems that occur during more popular time periods when I barely use the internet. I just got Wildblue on December 20th. I am wondering how far back that will have cut my usage by the end of 2006. If anyone asks me for my opinion of Wildblue, I will warn them to stay away.

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I'm of the opinion that this latest revision to a "rolling FAP" was a less than intelligent business move. For those with pre-existing contracts, it means a noticeable REDUCTION in cumulative throughput without a proportionate pricing reduction. It's like signing a January contract to have 100 gallons of something put in your tank every month for a year, then discovering in May that they're only putting 93 gallons in.

I wouldn't go with a throttle system at all. I'd hit the heavy users in the pocketbook. Like Eric says, it's shared bandwidth - but some folks think that means "everybody else share what's left after I'm done". I'd return to the originally contracted FAP thresholds, and start charging heavily for megabytes in excess. Instead of SPENDING money on a complicated and probably expensive throttling mechanism, I'd MAKE money by tacking the overage fee onto the monthly statement of bandwidth hungry customers. The cell phone companies do it all the time.

//greg//

I realize that such an approach might be unfair to people in the middle of the continent, they are sort of in a bottleneck between the coasts, but if people on the west coast are willing to stay up late and people on the east coast are willing to get up early, they shouldn't have the 10,000 MBs cut back in the value package.

With the current system, someone could be a very light user during weekdays and a hog on the weekend during the most popular hours.

If they continue their current approach, they will have to continue cutting back megabytes as more people subscribe. I happen to be a natural night owl, but most people aren't. Wildblue should want to push people like me away from the more popular hours by not cutting back my megabytes if I stay in the less popular time periods. I did a software upgrade today about 4 PM, that is 7 PM on the east coast. If using the internet during popular hours would cost me more megabytes, I would never upgrade software during those hours.

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Are you expecting Wildblue users to do that on their own without any reward?

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One satellite currently provides service to CONUS and most of Canada; Anik-F2 located at 111.1 West longitude

Satellite location is unrelated to this discussion. It's the terrestrial connectivity that influences the overall ebb and flow of internet traffic. Of additional concern to the satellite customer is the gateway SMTS/server load.

//greg//

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Moot point Eric. There are at least six gateways controlling individual spotbeams in multiple time zones.
controlled by
Winnipeg: beams 7, 9, 10, 11, 17, 26, 27
Riverside: beams 12, 13, 14, 21, 22, 23, 30, 31
Cheyennne: beams 15, 16, 24, 32, 33, 34, 38, 43
Syracuse: beams 18, 19, 20, 28, 35, 36, 41
Laredo: beams 25, 29, 37, 39, 40, 42, 44, 45
Vancouver(?): beams 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8

It becomes more evident when you see it color coded where each color represents the originating gateway. Riverside California for example (yellow); most concentrated coverage, most potential for "time zone congestion". Laredo Texas (lt blue) and Cheyenne Wyoming (dk blue) on the other hand control beams in what appears to be three time zones. Usage is more chronologically distributed. The other three gateways appear to have two time zone coverage.

//greg//

Hey everyone, please make note of the correct spelling for the company... it is: Xplornet
Took a while for me to get used to it as well...