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newsletter://mv.com
September 2000
Rates changes
Effective September 1, 2000 we have made some adjustments to our rates.
Notably:
- The standard $20.00/month dialup account now includes 300 hours of con-
nect time per month. With this increase, we have also removed the old
"Extra" rate tier. Usage beyond 300 hours a month is charged 20 cents
per hour (calculated to the nearest penny).
- Dedicated IP (where we reserve a space in a dialup group for your use
so that you can use it full time) has been reduced to $75/month; Dual
Dedicated IP (allowing you to bond two dialup channels together for
higher throughput) is now $125/month. As always, dedicated IP supports
analog and ISDN connections.
- Prices on our high speed access via T1 leased line have been reduced,
and we've also added a rate category for end users of T1 service who do
not require full usage on that T1. (The guidelines can be found on our
web page, www.mv.com.)
- The storage and bandwidth allocations for most of our Web hosting ser-
vices have been increased. For example, with an Exclusive web server
the bandwidth allocation has been increased to 10GB per month.
For more complete information on our current rates and services, please
visit our web page at www.mv.com (and select the Rates and Services link).
Single Number Service
For the past several months we have been evaluating a statewide dialup
service from Verizon that, if you are a Verizon customer, lets you reach our
service by calling a single 1-500 number from anywhere in the state of New
Hampshire. This service, Single Number Service (SNSPRI), provides you with
an alternative to our BNH numbers, using different telephone trunking and
using different equipment on our end. You may find that you get different
results using different carriers (Verizon vs Brooks) or that your modem
operates better if you call one kind of equipment at our location vs
another.
As of September 1, we have moved this service out of a trial mode.
From a Verizon number anywhere in NH, you can dial 1-500-699-6387 to reach
us via this facility.
In conjunction with this, we will be moving our Nashua dialin lines so
that they become part of the SNSPRI group. The 886-7124 number will con-
tinue to work, however it will connect you to a different kind of equipment
than before. If you are using ISDN access using data over voice (DOVBS) on
this number, you will need to change the number that you call for this.
(We're not certain of the actual number yet, but it will be posted on our
web page when we do know.)
Upcoming Billing Changes
The rates changes mentioned above are the first result of an overall
review of our services, rates, and billing procedures. We need to do this
kind of review periodically in order to make sure that we are giving you the
best rates and services that we can according to our models, and to make
sure that the procedures that we use are as efficient and cost-effective as
we can reasonably make them - especially in the face of increasing costs in
other areas of business, e.g., inflationary forces. As part of this pro-
cess, we expect to be making some changes to the way we do our billing.
Note that we are NOT announcing changes at this time, but providing advance
word of some things that we see happening down the road.
Some of the changes we are planning include:
- A change from billing in arrears. We are one of the few ISPs that bill
for access after the access has been delivered - in our case, we bill
for the past two months of service, which means that we usually collect
payment for service several months after it has been delivered. This
policy adds significantly to our expenses, especially as times have
changed and many of our services (such as DSL) require us to pay ahead,
too. In order to continue to deliver high quality service at competi-
tive pricing, we feel that we need to change this practice.
- Paper billing. You might not think it, but paper billing is a substan-
tial overhead item for us, and is one reason we bill every two months
instead of monthly. We will be introducing ways to help eliminate
paper billing, including:
= a policy of only sending a paper bill to you if you sign up for
paper billing, or if you have an outstanding balance - and of
charging a small billing fee for sending a paper bill;
= billing by email will be the default for new customers - we have
supported billing by email for the past 8 years, but you have had
to specifically elect to receive bills this way. By default, all
new customers in the past have been received paper bills;
= availability of online bills that you can access, e.g. to print
and mail back to us;
= credit card billing.
We anticipate making these changes in about 6 months.
DSL status
Some unexpected delays, including the Verizon strike in August, pushed
back our rollout of our DSL service far longer than we predicted. When we
projected a June rollout we believed it was accurate and we are as unhappy
as anyone that there has been a delay. The good news is that our delivery
of DSL services is now happening (in the case of our DSL/C product) or
imminent (in the case of DSL/V). As of the time of writing of this
newsletter, we have begun to see initial installations of DSL/C, and we
believe that the final hurdles for DSL/V are only a few days from being
overcome.
Please watch our DSL page (which you can get to by going to
http://dsl.mv.com/) for continuing updates.
Some Staff Updates
We've had some staff changes over the summer, too: Tim McKenzie and
Bob Auger both joined the Customer Service group in August. Tim is one of
the daytime CS people and Bob is taking over the evening shift.
Also, we failed to mention a few changes that happened over the summer:
long time staffer Ken Pittman was back working full-time in Customer Service
over the summer and has just left to return to college for the fall semes-
ter. And Erik Martin, who had been helping with accounting chores for over
a year, broadened his skills by training in Customer Service early in the
summer and then working the evening shift for several months. Erik is
attending college full-time this fall, too, but he will continue working in
Customer Service on Saturdays and he'll also be helping out in accounting
for a few hours most days during the week.
MV Communications PO Box 4963, Manchester NH 03108 (603) 629-0000