YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — For Allied Telesis customers at Yokota who have been waiting to have their Internet protocol television service activated, the wait is over.
If you’ve set up an installation appointment, that is.
About 300 base residents have had their IPTV service installed and activated since May 31, said Scott Clark, Allied Telesis’ on-site project manager at Yokota.
“We know exactly who needs to be installed,” he said, explaining that Allied has been calling customers at home and work to try to schedule installation dates. About 1,200 households have signed up for the television service, he said.
Clark also said customers can stop by or call Allied’s store in the Yokota Community Center to schedule an installation date.
“Right now the biggest challenge facing us with the IPTV service is scheduling,” Clark said, adding that setting up times for technicians to install necessary hardware at homes has been difficult because many residents are gone during the summer.
The service streams television programming directly from the States as it is broadcast there.
Clark said one complaint customers have had with IPTV is that often the shows they want to watch are on at inconvenient times. For example, a show airing during prime time in the States airs in the early morning, Japan time.
Clark said Allied is testing a digital video recorder system, similar to TiVo, that will allow users to program times to record shows and watch them later.
“We’re not out of the woods yet, but we are making a lot of progress,” he said. “We just want to make sure we do it right the first time.”
Full service means full price
All Yokota Air Base customers who signed up with Allied Telesis for phone and Internet service are connected, a company official said.
“The community has been very patient,” said Scott Clark, Allied’s on-site project manager.
The company encountered a number of problems in setting up its basewide services over the past several months, including slow and inconsistent Internet speeds.
Clark said Allied has worked to remove network bottlenecks and upgrade the system, including doubling its bandwidth so that all customers now should be receiving the speeds for which they signed up.
Because of this, Clark said, customers now will be charged the full price for service, beginning with their July bill. Allied had been crediting customer accounts to bring the charges in line with the price for the slowest level of service — 1.5 Mbps.
“If customers still experience slow connections, we encourage them to give our help desk a call so that they can get a trouble ticket started on the problem and we can have someone working on it right away,” Clark said.
— Bryce S. Dubee
