YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — With many residents at Yokota still suffering from slow Internet speeds, the new phone, Internet and television provider says it’s working hard to fix the problems.
But people need to be patient, said Scott Clark, Allied Telesis’ vice president for global procurement and operations and Yokota’s on-site project manager.
“We still have a long way to go,” he said Wednesday, explaining that in some parts of the base, the wiring is about 30-years-old and needs to be replaced with “quality equipment that will last us at least another 15-plus years.”
“Every day we take a look at where the slow connections are and work to fix them,” said Clark.
While Allied works out its network issues, Clark said it will only charge customers for the 1.5 Mbps service.
“We will continue to offer the credit to our customers until we have the network to the standards we want it to be at,” he said.
Clark said that many of the problems encountered by the provider could not be addressed until customers start using the network.
With roughly 85 percent of their Yokota customers already connected, he said Allied has been “revisiting the network architecture” to see what types of applications used by customers are having issues, and what fixes are needed to be made.
Clark also said Tuesday that Allied has begun testing its IPTV video service, but would not give a concrete launch date for the television service.
One concern raised by some Yokota residents was how the introduction of the Internet-based television service will affect the already clogged bandwidth.
Clark said that IPTV would in no way impact Internet performance because it operates on a separate network, although both are delivered into homes on the same equipment.
As Allied continues to try and speed up their Internet, some customers have grown tired of not getting the services they signed up for.
“I’m definitely not happy with the service,” said Staff Sgt. Korlacan Khanthavilay , who is signed up for the 10 Mbps service.
An avid Internet user, Khanthavilay said that although his speeds have improved some, he still is not able to play certain games, such are the fast-paced shooter “Counterstrike: Source,” the way he used to on previous providers.
“Japan Telecom was more stable,” he said. “And I know it’s not the server I play on because it worked fine on both Japan Telecom and Americable.”
Still, Khanthavilay said that he is glad that Allied is offering a credit to their customers because, “Paying $40 for bad service is still better than $75 for bad service.”
Allied customers can call 1-773-634-7801 for any non-technical issues they have.
