CALGARY – The claims Vonage is making are wrong and misleading, Shaw Communications CEO Jim Shaw said today in a press release responding to the VOIP company’s CRTC application.
This week, as reported here, Vonage announced it has asked the Commission to look into the $10 fee (calling it a VOIP tax) Shaw recommends consumers pay per month in order to guarantee quality of service if and when they are using a third party voice provider for local telephony (other than Shaw’s own digital telephony product).
"Vonage’s news release concerning Shaw’s quality of service enhancement is both wrong and misleading," said Shaw’s statement.
Shaw offers its High Speed Internet customers "the opportunity to improve the quality and reliability of Internet telephony services offered by third party providers like Vonage and others. The service is completely discretionary to our customers."
Continues the release: "All public Internet networks (this is not unique to Shaw) encounter intermittent bandwidth shortfalls as bandwidth is consumed by applications such as Internet browsing and email. Bandwidth availability is an important issue when using voice services because the amount of bandwidth available at any given time can vary based on Internet usage. With Internet telephony, voice packets are treated like regular data. Under peak loads voice frames will be dropped equally with data frames. Regular data, however, is not time sensitive and dropped packets can be corrected through the process of retransmission. Dropped voice packets, which are time sensitive, cannot be corrected in this manner. Shaw’s quality of service enhancement helps address these shortcomings with Internet telephony."
Shaw’s release also attempted to differentiate between the voice service it offers as compared to Vonage, saying it "does not offer an Internet telephony service in direct competition with Vonage or any other Internet phone provider. Shaw’s Digital Phone service is a carrier-grade, primary line, local and long distance residential telephone service that uses a managed IP network."
The Shaw release also cautioned users, saying that VOIP providers do not provide the same level of 911 service to customers and intimated that Vonage’s complaint has more to do with the parent company’s planned IPO than anything else.
"This is an old and tired complaint from Vonage," said Peter Bissonnette, president of Shaw Communications Inc. "We find the timing of this news release to be somewhat curious. We think it has more to do with their Initial Public Offering and the fact they have so few customers in Canada rather than any real concerns about consumers."
Vonage responded quickly Wednesday afternoon with another press volley of its own, again asking that Shaw answer the questions it originally put forward.
"In its release today, Shaw conveniently ignored answering any of the questions Vonage Canada posed to the CRTC about Shaw’s VOIP tax," said Joe Parent, vice-president of business development and marketing at Vonage Canada. "Instead, Shaw simply regurgitated the vague information already posted on its web site without offering its customers or Vonage Canada customers a clear explanation."
Vonage Canada reiterated its request for Shaw to answer the following questions, as posed in Vonage’s submission to the CRTC:
* What does Shaw’s so-called ‘enhancement’ service consist of, from both a technological and service implementation perspective?
* What evidence does Shaw have to prove its ‘enhancement’ service actually delivers on the promise of enhancing a customer’s use of a non-Shaw phone service provider and to what extent?
* What is the justification for a recurring charge to the customer for a service that it appears may consist of a one-time configuration of the Shaw-approved cable modem used by Shaw’s high-speed Internet customers?
* What is the take-up rate – past, present and likely future – of Shaw’s enhancement service, and what is the likely effect of the service on competition in local VoIP services?
