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newsletter://mv.com
September 1999
Hollis and Wilton telcos
A couple of months ago the independent Hollis Telephone Company
informed its customers that it would no longer treat calls to non-Bell-
Atlantic numbers as local. Our "bnh" V.90/ISDN/modem numbers are provided
by Brooks Fiber, which is definitely not Bell Atlantic; the upshot here is
that customers of Hollis and Wilton telephone companies can no longer dial
our BNH numbers (even the Milford and Nashua numbers) without incurring a
charge for a toll call.
This situation is mitigated for those customers who can call Nashua
Bell Atlantic numbers as a local call -- this applies to some if not all
people served by the Hollis telephone company. Since we maintain a Bell
Atlantic V.90/ISDN/modem hunt group in Nashua at 886-7124, those of you who
can no longer call our BNH numbers but who can still make a non-toll call
to Bell Atlantic Nashua numbers can use that number.
This still does not help those of you served by the Wilton telephone
company, who can not call Nashua as a local call. Some customers of other
independent telephone companies in the state are in a similar situation,
not being able to call neighboring non-Bell-Atlantic numbers as a local
call even when those numbers serve the same communities as the equivalent
Bell Atlantic exchanges. Note that this is not necessarily a problem with
the independent telephone company's policies as much as it's the way the
economics work for them.
There may be some relief in sight, at least for those of you who are
customers of independent telephone companies and who can call a neighboring
Bell Atlantic number as a local call. (Some customers of independent tele-
phone companies in New Hampshire have no such Bell Atlantic neighbors, but
many do.) Bell Atlantic is proposing an ISP service that would allow us to
reach their entire New Hampshire footprint; from our perspective the state
would be divided into several sectors, but from your view there would sim-
ply be a single statewide number that would reach us as a local call.
There may be more news on this front that is too tentative to write here;
when and if we have more solid information we will post it in the usual
places.
New test dialin number
As we announced in August in the mv.forum.general newsgroup, we have
been running a test of some alternate remote access server equipment. The
remote access server (RAS) is the device that answers your calls and pro-
vides the PPP or SLIP protocol that connects your computer to the Internet.
Up until this time we've used Lucent/Livingston PM3 access servers; these
use Lucent-based modem chips to do the modem signalling on our end.
There are a lot of different client modems being made and used (i.e.,
modems in use by you, the person who places a call to an ISP's remote
access server). It's reasonable to think that different kinds of client
modems perform differently depending on which kind of RAS that the modem is
connecting to. For instance, a modem using Rockwell chips may interoperate
better with a RAS using Rockwell chips than it does with a RAS using
another kind of modem technology. It's this line of thinking that has led
us to this test: we feel that you may benefit by being able to choose from
more than one kind of remote access server to dial into.
We expect the test numbers to be in service at least through the end
of September; any status regarding these numbers will be posted to the
mv.forum.general newsgroup and on our web page in the "news" section (go to
www.mv.com, click on the Tools and Information link, and then click on the
News and Items of Interest link). You can find more information about the
trial -- including phone numbers -- at that web location.
Remaining analog modem pools going away
As you probably know, we've spent the last year and a half converting
from analog modem pools over to digital modem lines offering V.90, ISDN,
and normal modem service. For most of this time we maintained duplicate
facilities: we kept the analog modem pools longer than expected as it was
necessary to wait for the digital modem technology and the V.90 modem
implementations to mature. At this writing, however, we now only have
three small analog modem pools remaining (in Dover, Litchfield, and Man-
chester). Of these, the Dover hunt group on 740-9152 and the Litchfield
hunt group on 424-7428 will be disabled by the end of September at the
latest.
We also have a very small hunt group in Litchfield using Telebit
modems in use only by UUCP callers (UUCP is a protocol allowing periodic
automatic unattended communication between computers). This hunt group, at
429-1735, will also be disabled. UUCP callers should find better perfor-
mance dialing the appropriate BNH number.
Local network changes
Over the next few weeks we will be making some changes that affect our
internal bandwidth and our connections to the Internet backbone. Currently
our internal network has connections to the backbone in three separate
locations: our original Litchfield facility, our Manchester office, and a
location at Destek in Nashua.
We will be replacing the Sprintlink connection that comes into Litch-
field with a UUnet connection coming into Manchester. (This may well have
happened by the time you read this.) A number of high-speed circuits ter-
minating in Litchfield (both customer and internal) will be moved from
Litchfield to our Manchester office, centralizing the delivery of bandwidth
and coincidentally leaving us with no further Litchfield facilities.
Finally, we are replacing the T1 connection between MV and Destek with a
high-speed T3 ATM link (this link is in place as of this writing, currently
undergoing some tweaks before it goes into full use). This ATM link will
help improve local traffic as well as helping to carry more data via the
Frontier backbone link that we obtain from Destek.
Referrals
Don't forget that we reinstated our referral program last spring. If
you recommend a new customer to us, make sure they let us know that you did
so. When we have received their initial deposit, we will credit $10 to
your account. This applies to new normal dialup accounts only, and the
credit must go to an existing customer.
Staff Updates
We are pleased to welcome Mike D'Entremont as a recent addition to our
Customer Support staff. And we were remiss in not welcoming Erik Martin,
who assists us in accounting and joined us in March.
MV Communications, Inc. (603) 629-0000