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newsletter://mv.com
May 1997
Note: text copies of all issues of the monthly newsletter can be found
on mv in the public archive; look in /pub/mv/inews. They're also in
the online menu!
This bill
This billing period covers January 1 through April 30, 1997. Many
of you have already been billed for at least part of this period, but
those of you who have been with us since before last September have
only been billed through December 31. This will get us almost caught
up with our billing, and we expect that the next bill will come out in
early July and catch us up completely. After that point we do expect
to be on a regular billing schedule. (Then we can stop featuring "bil-
ling" as a regular item in the newsletter!)
Change in billing structure
We do need to say one more thing about billing. Up until now,
many bills have included a "base fee for next month" charge. This base
fee is the service fee for the upcoming period, much like the fee that
you pay in advance for your rent or your cable service or many other
monthly service items. During the time that we've been behind in the
bills, this may have been a little confusing since the "next month" had
already come and gone by the time you got the invoice.
After much deliberation, we have decided to discontinue billing in
this manner. Bills will no longer include the base fee for the next
month; i.e., we will only be charging for the service that is listed as
having been used, with no prepayment required for the next month. The
main reason for this is simplification: we still believe that charging
next month base fees are reasonable, but eliminating them will make the
bills easier to understand and will make some things easier on our end
as well. We may, at some point in the future, decide to go back to
applying them again. Note that that there will still be certain types
of accounts for which the next month's base fee will still be charged.
Note also that the signup fee/deposit for new accounts will still be
required.
Manchester POP
The new Manchester POP (Point of Presence) came online as of
approximately April 21. This means that we now have a modem pool in
Manchester - prior to this, we had a Manchester number (645-6387) that
forwarded to Litchfield. (The forwarding number is still there, and is
expected to be there for some time.)
The new Manchester number is 645-4986. You should use this number
if:
* You are local to Manchester but not to another MV POP;
* You are local to Manchester AND you are local to another MV POP,
but you get best connections by dialing Manchester. Note that
because of individual variations in the way calls are handled by
NYNEX, we can not predict which POP will give you the best connec-
tion rates: it's best for you to try to find out.
If you're an IP user and you want to use the new Manchester POP, you
will need to make sure you have a dynamically assigned IP address.
(You can also have a static IP address that is tied to Manchester, but
it's generally best if you use a dynamic address. A dynamic address
will let you into any MV POP that you call.) If you have a static IP
address that is assigned to another MV POP, you will need to get it
changed before you call Manchester. Do this by contacting our support
staff by phone or by email (mv-admin@mv.mv.com).
Please ensure that you are local to whatever MV POP that you call.
MV is not responsible for long distance or other telephone charges
incurred by calling us.
Other MV POPs
A reminder: you can find out about all of our POPs and all of
their numbers by looking on our web page. Simply go to www.mv.com and
click on Access Numbers.
MV is moving
We will be moving our staff and servers from Litchfield to a new
location in Manchester in June. (You may recall that our December
newsletter also announced a move coming in the first quarter of the
year: the lease agreement on that location fell through and we had to
start the process over, an unfortunate duplication of time and energy.)
Because we will be moving our servers, there will be a server
outage during the day that the move is done. That is, some or all of
the server systems (web, news, shell) will be unavailable for a period
of several hours. We haven't yet scheduled the date, but expect it to
be in early-to-mid June. Please watch our web page (go to www.mv.com,
select Extended Information for MV Users, and then go to News and Items
of Interest under the Announcements heading) for specifics. We'll also
post the information in the mv.forum.general newsgroup.
Information Resources at MV
We'd like to encourage you to use some of the resources provided
by MV that provide information to you or let you interact with us or
with other MV users. These include:
* MV newsgroups. Use our news server to read the mv discussion
groups mv.forum.general, mv.forum.shell, and mv.forum.dialip .
Outage information is also posted in mv.info.outages, and feedback
may be given to that group as well.
* ClariNet news. ClariNet is an Internet-based newspaper with news
stories, business features, technical articles, comics, and so
forth. MV provides ClariNet to our users on our news server (look
for newsgroups beginning with "clari.") as well as on our web page
(go to www.mv.com/clarinews)
* Outage and status. Please be sure to check our web page periodi-
cally for information about planned outages and events, or reports
about outages that may be occuring or have recently occured. Go
to www.mv.com, click on Extended Information for MV Users, and
you'll see the section on announcements.
* Other resources for MV users. Also in the Extended Information
for MV Users section you'll find information on how to include
your name and home page in our public index, how to use various
tools for your web pages, various how-to articles, terms and usage
policies, and so forth. Feel free to explore.
* General MV information. You may also want to wander around from
the top level of our web page to see more information about MV
that perhaps you did not know. For instance, our rates and kinds
of services are revised from time to time; there may be things we
offer that you do not know about.
MV Communications, Inc. (603) 429-2223