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August 2001
Dialup rate increase
Effective October 1, 2001, the price for our standard (300 hour)
dialup IP accounts and UNIX shell accounts will be raised from $20.00 to
$22.50 per month. This represents our first increase in our 10+ years of
doing business. While we would like to be able to continue forever without
any increases at all, we have to face the facts. Since our $20 price point
was set in 1995, we have continually either lowered our prices or increased
the basic hourly allocation. However, over that 6 year period our costs
have risen. Inflation has increased the consumer price index by about 16%,
and steadily rising telecom taxes have become a standard method of hiding
increasing government revenue. This change will help us stay more in line
with our original plan and to give dialup access the attention it deserves.
Group accounts
Do you have a small company or other associated group that may want to
share a dialup account? This month we are introducing an account for just
that purpose. Our standard dialup accounts are to be used by only one per-
son (or one family). By contrast, with a group account, you get a single
account that can be used by multiple members of your organization. The way
it works is:
* You must be a real company or organization (we will make a determina-
tion of whether you qualify for this account).
* The account is priced according to how much total usage you expect.
You choose the number of hours to be allocated to the account. Any
number of people in your organization can use the account, so long as
the hourly allocation is not exceeded.
* The basic price is $90 including up to 1000 hours per month. You can
increase the hourly limit: $10 for each 100 hours added. Note that
the limit must be specified in advance. Usage over the hourly cap
will be charged at the standard excess usage rate.
* This account is designed to acommodate organizations whose members
need dialup access from time to time, but who do not want to manage a
lot of different accounts. It's not to be abused for other kinds of
sharing.
New Bandwidth
At long last it appears that our new Genuity circuit will be installed
during the month of September. This will give us an additional T3 backbone
connection -- with higher bandwidth, lower latency, and better ability to
turn up additional bandwidth than we have now. Please watch for this, I
think we will all be happy when it comes in.
Last call for ClariNet
In our last newsletter we asked for feedback about whether we should
keep the ClariNet news service. We only got about 6 replies -- and since
the staff here does not want to see it go, we'll repeat the call. If you
have an opinion about whether we should keep the ClariNet news, please let
us know by sending email to mv-qotm@mv.mv.com .
DSL rates and areas
Some new DSL updates:
DSL/V (using an existing phone line that is shared for voice and DSL):
there are some new speeds available for the DSL/V service, as well as
some new areas opening up in New Hampshire in the third quarter of
2001.
DSL/C (using a separately installed phone line used exclusively for
DSL):
as we mentioned last month, we are now able to serve certain communi-
ties in MA and CT with DSL/C. The information about these areas is
now on our web page.
Please go to our web page (http://www.mv.com/) and go to the Rates and
Services area to find out about our DSL offerings.
Reminders of changes coming next billing
Please remember that the changes we have been talking about for the
past nine months will begin with next months' billing. I'm sure that most
of you are tired of seeing this in each newsletter, so we'll just highlight
a few items here:
* There will be a $1 charge for paper billing, each invoice, so please
switch to email billing and save paper and money for all of us! If
you aren't signed up for email billing, please open your web browser
and go to this URL: http://home.mv.net/emailrequest/
* No account will automatically be billed "dormant." If you want your
account to be dormant, you must explicitly tell us that you want it
that way.
* The bug that billed some dormant companion accounts at $2 or less will
finally be fixed.
* Our rate structure for providing domain nameservice is being replaced:
your first domain is free when combined with another paid account
(such as a dialup account) -- additional domains will be only
$1/month. For current nameservice, the old rate system will be grand-
fathered through January 1, 2001 -- although you may elect to change
it to the new rate if you prefer.
Other changes constitute formalizing of our billing policies so that
they are clearer than they used to be. Remember also you can find the
billing policy information on our web page, in our terms and conditions
area, currently at:
http://www.mv.com/mv/enh/userinfo/t+c/payment.shtml
Note that this is a "deep" URL that may change, but you can always get to
our terms and conditions page by navigating from either our main page
(http://www.mv.com/) or the customer page that you should be making use of
(http://home.mv.net/).
MV Communications Inc. PO Box 4963, Manchester, NH 03108 (603) 629-0000